Despite been hosted on a wuxia site, Coiling Dragon is actually a fantasy series! Of course only in the Chinese sense, not the western one with orcs and goblins.
In the beginning, the story has a slow start, it has many unfamilar concepts and characters. Its very easy to get overwhelmed by all the different things in story. In some instances it can get quite hard to read; for example in one part of the book, I just couldn't believe how much of a jerk Linlei (the mc) was!
Like when he ran away and abandoned allies he met on the road instead of helping them (they were attacked by bandits).
I was shocked. Guess I was too used to reading about conventional goodie two shoe types in Japanese novels. Later this behaviour was somewhat vindicated when these same people actually turned around and backstabbed Linlei (they met again). The world which the author has created was not a nice place. Its a dog eat dog world.
Note this series is veerry long, the length is over 5000 pages and counting. So over the course of the novels, you'll get quite attached to the people in the story. They may start out as unknown strangers with funny names, but as you see these characters develop, hear about their inspirations and dreams, and how they go about their trials and tribulations, you can't help but feel a bond with them. And when they pass away, it can be quite emotional. sif
Another thing I should mention about the story, is that the MC often gets powerups out of nowhere. The guy is like a character in an RPG with maxed out luck stat heh.
Although, somehow the author managed this in way that it does not disrupt the power levels or logic of the story. In many Japanese stories, when the MC achieves some huge power breakthroughs against their enemies in one arc, the author usually resort to some kind of contrived plot device to bring the power levels back down again in the next arc. Like using "xxx" puts a huge strain on the body... so it can't be used too often, etc. Or even pure unexplained plotholes that leaves the readers wondering - if the mc could do technique "xxx" before, why didn't he use it against enemy "xxx"? Yeah that kind of story telling can bug you after you see it a few times.
Luckily IET (the author) wrote Coiling Dragon in a such way, that it does not resort to such cheap tricks. The power levels are smooth. Even when Linlei attains some great power, something will inevitably come along and shatter that preconceived notion. He's forced to go all out. Its like a goldfish living in a pond, suddenly discovering there's an ocean out there. Or climbing a mountain but finding out it was nothing more than the foothills of an even greater mountain. The author creates events that turn the world upside down. There's newer and bigger worlds to explore, deadlier and more powerful enemies. Newer thrills that come one after an another. Each new place is populated with denizens and people that are strange and unique. They got their own way of doing things. New concepts to discover, new battles to face, etc. Once it picks up steam, the story turns into this one great epic adventure - like a never ending roller coaster. Heh, it just becomes really fun to read.
I never knew they wrote such good fantasy novels in China, this is my first. But after this I'll be sure to keep an eye out for similar works if they get translated.
PS. The translator took the liberty of westernising most of the characters and place names. However if you find the localized names off-putting, I highly suggest you copy the story in a word doc and do an all word replace with the original Chinese name like I did (the translator have kindly included them in brackets).
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