So, this is yet another Chinese webnovel, with the distinction of basing itself quite heavily around magic. Even a lot of Xianxia stories (as opposed to Wuxia: more traditional martial arts novels) tend to feature plenty of warriors and whatnot -- and let's face it, freezing things or burning things or condemning things to the umpteenth circle of hell is a helluva lot cooler than bashing things on the head with other things. So, yay magic ftw!
That being said, a couple niggles:
-) Firstly, the chapters seem to be quite short, so on a pure usage basis, I'd recommend reading it in spurts -- getting your fix day by day is a little like being fed via drip feed.
(i.e. average chapter length seems to be 1500 words, compared to roughly 2500-3000 for Coiling Dragon/Panlong)
-) Second, the sexism. Oh-mah-gahd the sexism.
Now, gimme a second before you explode with cries of social justice warriors stealing away all your funsies.
So, like, I'm perfectly capable of making allowances for texts, and seeing beyond some things I disagree with; and I realize these webnovels come from a very particular subculture of a very distinct macroculture than we might be familiar with -- so yeah, they can all sound a bit sexist.
All I'm saying is that the particular line about how important appearance is to a woman is so incredibly repetitive that it'd be annoying no matter what he was saying.
Like, imagine if every single paragraph, the author started with: "So, you know how dogs are most prized for their sleekness of fur?" And then halfway through he threw in: "This dog had matted fur; how it was to be pitied! No one could ever love it; it will die alone in the cold!" Before closing with "Then a dog with silky fur ran past; everyone turned to admire it, because after all, sleekness of fur is a dog's pride!"
It's actually a little mind-boggling. There's no way it's serving any expositional purpose anymore; we get it, in this world females are judged first and foremost over their appearances, and have completely internalized this fact. You mentioned that literally in the previous sentence. Do you really have nothing else to say?
So, ostensibly the hope is that eventually he'll get his eponymous Close Combat 1337 h4X0r skillz, and the series will be about bashing dudes in the face with Water Gun and Hydro Pump (Pokemon Gen 1, anyone?). And at that point, there will be fewer opportunities to point out how important it is to be beautiful when you are possessed of a vagina. But considering how far he went out of his way to bring it into pretty much every aspect of the story so far, I'm not going to exactly hold my breath for it.
I'm picturing:
"Buahaha; you can't harm me, Hero! I have a hostage! It's a girl! If you don't do what I say, I'll use my magic to add a mole to her left cheek, rendering her FOREVER UNMARRIAGEABLE!!"
"Villain-man! You're so evil! I'm going to bash your face in so hard that, if you were a woman, no one would ever talk to you, or exchange basic goods and services for money, or stand to be in the same province as you, because you'll be so ugly!!"
Guehehe.
Other than that, it's reasonably entertaining so far; more of the same if you're into the whole OP protagonist power-fantasy webnovel thing. Let's see how it pans out.
[Edit: A few hours after I wrote this, IT0 added his review above, having read ahead in the raws up to Chapter 70 (the rest of us n00bs being stuck on 20). So, just sayin' this now: looks like I called it. This novel's portrayal of women is totally shot, and I totally got that waaay early -- before it was cool, for maximum hipster points!! =3 ]
(-21)
