Coiling Dragon starts off with a very simple premise of a boy's goal to reclaim glory for his clan. The story has a lot of momentum at the start, tracking his growth as a magus and warrior. Unlike other novels, I like that the author emphasizes the importance of hard work and Linley does not suffer any extreme power ups: his gains are the product of his training.
However, his character is extremely bland. He doesn't have much personality beyond his desire to train, which makes him very boring to read about outside of fighting. But since this is an action novel, it's no huge deal that brawns > brains 🙄
My first main problem is with the author's treatment of women. Every single woman (I think) in the story is described as beautiful. But that's it: almost all of them are just walking Barbie dolls with barely any personality that's not skin deep. The one girl who isn't one dimensional is someone who turns down the main character. And the author is extremely vindictive about her rejecting our perfect Linley. She gets trampled to the ground, and from that point on, the author takes every opportunity to remind her how she missed out on the "perfect" guy. I can take a little bitterness, but it's just WAY over the top.
Now before I get to the writing, a disclaimer that I know that CD is an amateur work. But that doesn't excuse it from repeating stuff OVER and OVER again. I don't mind a reminder every once in a while about a concept. IET takes it to the next level. It's a running joke among the readers, but it's like the author thinks the readers are so retarded that we can't remember something repeated 5x already within the space of 2-3 chapters.
My final issue is something that popped up relatively recently. There is way too much sighing in amazement and praise lately AKA circlejerking. The top combatants are always admiring (jerking each other off, if you will) Linley, if not each other. Obviously, a person's accomplishments is mainly validated through others in society. Nevertheless, it's fatiguing to read the same formula again and again.
Overall, CD is a very good weak-to-strong story that I do recommend for people who enjoy that kind of story. It would just be so much better if the author could polish his writing and cut out 40% of all the useless filler and repetition, as well as give people personalities outside of their beauty or fighting ability.
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