khyie's Reviews (267)

 I found out after I finished this book that the author also wrote 'The Perfect Destiny'. THANK GOD I did not know that before I started because I may've never actually read this which would've been a damned shame because as much as I hated The Perfect Destiny is about as much as I loved this novel.
That was... quite a ride. There were certain things that I saw coming and certain things that genuinely left me going what the actual f*** but I definitely enjoyed the trip. I can't speak to how scary it was since I find horror on page extremely difficult to affect me and it seemed to rely more on gore (which also got kind of repetitive) but I loved the characters and enjoyed the plot. I still have so many questions about the biggest twist in the story but I think I probably just need to read the end again and actually process what I'm reading.

no seriously, tell me if I understood this right--did Ruan Nanzhu observe Lin Qiushi's progress through the doors and then literally re-write reality just so he could put himself into Lin Qiushi's experiences and be with him? That was the twelfth door? Or did the twelfth door never actually exist for Lin Qiushi since Ruan Nanzhu fell in love with him? I understand why, once Ruan Nanzhu left to be in reality with Lin Qiushi there wouldn't be a twelfth door anymore. I just didn't quite understand anything else that was happening there

.  To be fair, I was still pretty much in stunned-trauma mode thanks to the knife that the author kept twisting there at the end, so I wasn't really grasping anything I was reading anymore. 

It's not that you couldn't tell from the very beginning that one of the twins was going to die, but I think I was holding out hope for it to be Cheng Yixie, solely because Cheng Qianli probably could've recovered from his death. The emotional impact of it would've probably been a lot less, though. Cheng Yixie's despair after Cheng Qianli's death, after everything he'd done to save his brother, was some quality tragedy. I have an actual screenshot of a later knife-twisting scene that I took solely so I could write 'fuck you' on it. I wouldn't have had a scene like that if Cheng Yixie died.

 
Also, mad props to Ruan Nanzhu. I can't believe I have to say this but I've read enough CN now that one of my biggest complaints is the domineering/doting love interest who's sole purpose is to support the MC and otherwise disappears off the page. I loved Ruan Nanzhu and his female personas Ruan Baijie/Zhu Meng. I won't lie that I did like Ruan Baijie/Zhu Meng more at first, just because they were so much fun but it was nice to see those traits I loved in the doors start appearing in the Ruan Nanzhu of the real world, as he got more comfortable with Lin Qiushi. I loved his ridiculous acting in the door worlds (omg, when he acted like a wronged girlfriend after knowing Lin Qiushi for a grand total of like 4 hours XDXDXD i was dying) and it brought me intense delight to later see obvious hallmarks of him in the things that Lin Qiushi did. Both of them were wildly entertaining characters but they worked best in concert. I understand the need for Lin Qiushi to go into doors without Ruan Nanzhu later in the novel. It's just unfortunate those doors were the weakest ones of the whole book. Luckily, I think there were only two of them.
Speaking of the doors though, I found the interpretations of most of them to be fun and interesting, especially when they would get a hint and I would think 'hey, I know that one!' I actually really want to play Hako Onna now. That game seems like a lot of fun--you know, when you aren't actually dying because of what happens. That door world was also one of the best of them.  

no lie, I actually did wonder for a moment there if Ruan Nanzhu had actually died. THAT would've been a crazy twist.

 Overall, this was a massively entertaining novel and I sincerely recommend it to anyone who likes QT/infinite flow novels--or wants to dip their foot in without getting caught up in one of the monsters, like The Earth is Online or Card Room.

 I wanted something light and a little bit pointless to read after I'd finished Kaleidoscope of Death but this... was not quite it. The dogblood drama was way too overwrought and then fizzled out to nothing and it leaned way too hard on the omega discrimination. I don't actually hold out a lot of hope that CN/JN ABOs will take some of the more nuanced approaches that I've seen to this particular trope, but this one was one of the worst examples of it's type. It was a bit entertaining at first but it's never a good sign that I went looking for another pointless ABO novel to cleanse my palate of this one. I didn't hate it. I just wanted something even slightly better. 

 Oh man, oh man, how to describe my feelings about this book?  This amazing and fascinating novel.
NGL, the main thing that drew me to this book was the main characters were pre-established as gay. None of that weird falling in love while insisting they're straight or the whole "I'm only gay for you" nonsense, which is such a relief, I can't even. This book also managed to hit one of my favorite things in writing which is a slow burn romance that is quite literally SLOW BURN. The UST is real and it was a wonderfully agonizing wait for the two characters to get together.
The really great thing though is that the romance wasn't the main point of the story. It was icing on the cake to a fascinating story about two incredibly smart people trying to figure out how to survive in a world that is actively, maliciously trying to kill them. All of the supporting characters were wonderfully developed and just because Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo left them behind, didn't mean that their contributions to the story ended. There were moments when they would go to fight something themselves that left me on the edge of my seat and overwhelmed with anxiety at the thought that they might die. Looking back on it, I kind of find myself marveling over how delicately the bits of character building were interwoven in the story to make me care about a large cast of characters who essentially popped in and out of the story. It isn't that EO didn't have it's share of cannon fodder characters, but I was taken by surprise by the characters I couldn't wait to die only for their deaths to hit me like a punch in the chest (view spoiler) to characters who I expected to hate but ended up becoming terribly precious to me (view spoiler).
In terms of the world building, there were a lot of times while I was reading this when the scenes would suddenly play out so vividly in my mind that all I could think was "I want to watch this so bad" and this is still true. If it was announced tomorrow that there was going to be a donghua, I would be screaming in agonized frustration over the wait until it releases. It dips into things I've seen done before in a way that manages to make it very real to me but also still maintains a sense of fascinating originality. The puzzles were very well plotted out although really difficult to come to a solution on your own. I eventually stopped even reading the rules when they were initially announced because I knew I wasn't going to be able to figure them out, however when Tang Mo and/or Fu Wenduo do, it left me a little astounded.
I think the only drawback for me was that I found the truth of the black towers to be both baffling and anticlimatic and also, there were a few times when I wished the story would just hurry up a little bit. When I finished it, I wasn't thinking man that was really damned good, but I did think it while I was reading it, and after I've really let what I read percolate in my mind, I think it's definitely one of the best books I've read.

 This was my second attempt to read this book and I can firmly say this one is just not working for me. I cannot understand how this story could possibly be 200 some chapters. Well, okay, I can, because it's dragging on FOREVER but there is literally no conflict in it. Ming Yu was a supermodel at the pinnacle of the world before he was paralyzed and then died, transmigrating into the body of a 16 year old Ming Yu from an alternate universe essentially. He decides to once more become the best supermodel ever and I don't even know why because I would be bored out of my mind with how easily everything happens for him. He is the most perfect model ever and every photographer he meets absolutely loves him and no one compares to him except his ML, who--in the 115 chapters I actually read covering a span of, I think, almost a year--never seems to actually model but is still somehow, the #1 supermodel in the whole wide world. The two goals Ming Yu establishes for himself from the start, 1) become the best supermodel and 2) ruin the dead!Ming Yu's scum not-boyfriend Cheng Su, don't even really seem to be goals. They're inevitabilities. He's rising up from the bottom, sure, and the novel wants me to believe he's working hard at his rise up and not taking the easy way out (which true, he does have an easier option than what he's doing) but also, it's hard to believe that anything is actually difficult for him because he's just so perfect and capable. It's just... boring. Even his supposed flaws, like being a shit terrible actor and can't cook are things that make him endearing and oh, there's this one specific role that a director needs him for and if he can't do it, the role won't exist because he's the most perfect person for it.
It's blowing my mind that an author who wrote something as creative, thoughtful, and fascinating as The Earth is Online somehow churned this never ending snoozefest out. I didn't outright hate this book. There's nothing in it that made me want to throw it at a wall or rage about, but I am annoyed at how much it felt like a slog because you're just rinsing and repeating the exact same scenarios over and over again, just with different people, and I did not expect that I was going to spend most of my time lamenting over picking it up again. 

 I... have so so many questions. Most of them are just variations on why? And also just a lot of ??????? I have never worked on a train and also... I have only been on exactly two trains that were not city subway systems and both of those trips were for less than 4 hours but I sincerely do not believe that the way things played out in this story could ever possibly be accurate. I'm not adverse to some suspension of belief if I'm having a good time but everything about this novel required you suspend belief. The last third of the book, I honestly just wanted it to be over and I was dragging myself through by constantly telling myself it was shorter than most of the cnovels I've been reading.

Some highlights of wtfery, most of which are spoilers...
1.

The MC and ML have a grand total of one(1) conversation, lasting less than 5 minutes, before they're screwing in the train bathroom--while MC is still pretty convinced that ML murdered a child (I think he was a child... they were ambiguous about his age... maybe mid-teens?)

 2. Where the fuck were these people hiding on a TRAIN that no one could find them even though they supposedly knew the train backwards and forwards?
3. The timeline of this book is LESS THAN 2 DAYS and the MC and ML go from complete strangers to passionately in love within that timeframe. wtf... 
 4.

There were so many explosions on this train. So many explosions. Why?
5. Everything about the CEO's convoluted plot to frame and then exonerate the ML was just... *waves hands* I saw that with my eyeballs and I still cannot fucking believe it.
6. Look, man. I'm going to be 100% honest. You can tell me if you greatly disagree with this but if you tell me that the train I'm on for potentially days has a wanted criminal on it, suspected of having murdered a kid by beating him to death, and you need me to be inconvenienced a bit so that you can find said suspect... please fucking inconvenience me. Please. Do not pull the weird fucking shenanigans that this novel did and just be like "let's continue to go on our two day journey even though I KNOW who's responsible for the murder and I can get authorities involved to assist me."
7. No. Seriously. I cannot understand why they couldn't delay the train in Wushuan to get local authorities involved in helping them find and remove the criminals from the train. No explosions would've needed to happen and no people would've been murdered. I think. I'm pretty sure they murdered that woman after Wushuan. Whyyyyyyyyyy?
8. That ending with MC's family... what even was that? Am I supposed to be happy for him? I don't think that was closure. I've seen way too many stories where a parent treats their kid like shit and the other parent's like 'no, you just don't understand! When you're not there he (it's always a he) really cares about you!' and that's somehow supposed to make it better. Garbage.

 9. I really can't tell if it's the translation or the writing that made so many things in this novel contradictory. They would say or think one thing and then a paragraph later, it's the exact opposite without any development to get to that point. 

 TL;DR: there's definitely better QT novels out there though at least this one never actually went the whole pseudo-rape route (#forever bitter about Perfect Destiny and others like it). Each world is brief and it's hit or miss if the face-slapping is even a focus of the world, and the yandere ML is pretty much instantly in love so there's no actual romance development either.

This was actually my second read through of most of the book, since I held off while waiting for the last two arcs to be finished for full re-read and... man, I have regrets. So many regrets. There was clearly a lot I'd forgotten about this book and maybe reading it arc by arc meant I had a better tolerance for the shenanigans that were going on in it but... thinking about it, probably not.

It didn't start off the worst, though the ML is the pretty typical yandere who falls in love almost instantly and spends the rest of the time trying to force a relationship with the MC if he initially isn't on board with it. This becomes increasingly tiresome when MC stops being so coldly distant and starts becoming as obsessively interested in the ML. This story legit reaches the point where MC goes into the next world, immediately finds the ML, and throws himself at him with no preamble, and the ML (who's character settings are almost always coldly distant, cruel, ruthless, etc) immediately folds like a wet paper towel and obsessively dotes on this complete stranger. The second-to-last arc, the Interstellar one, was by far and large the worst example.

Anyway, my point is it was boring to read. Each world was very short so the plot development was minimal, with stereotypical face-slapping happening around a romance that... wasn't terribly interesting. The book made some claims at one point about how the MC had to pursue the ML in every world and I wanted to laugh because that was a shame-faced lie. The ML was either the pursuer or he was instantly indulgently in love with the MC so to call anything he did a "pursuit" was a joke.

Also, I straight up skipped two arcs. I read the last chapter or two, just to get the overarching plot bits, and moved right the hell on. More details in the below content warning lines. Anyway, the last arc was moderately more interesting than the previous couple of arcs but it still felt like something of an abrupt ending

and then to find out that the entire creation of the seventh realm was essentially pointless since the MC didn't give a crap about it was... a choice.

 Aaaaaaaaghghdskajdfsasfjlka; This story was so rough and I'm hesitant to give it a rating because when it was on, it was ON FIRE and I was loving it and it caused me so much delicious, delicious emotional pain but when it was off, it was really off and there's some pieces of it I really did not like. I actually DNF'd this one the first time I started it, around the beginning of the second arc, because I couldn't tolerate the combination of misogyny and thoughts that this was going to be another "steel straight man in denial" story. I gave it a second go, much later, because there were so many good reviews of it and had a much better reaction to it but I still have complaints.
So... to get my problems out of the way, right away. The misogyny and transmisogyny in this story is real. And according to a later translator, gets worse in the second book. This is really frustrating because there's some wonderful female characters in this book and it's really disorienting because every time you're in Qi Leren's head or hearing the comments of any of the male characters (which for the record, the main cast is all male) it's rough. I loved Xue Yingying in the first arc and then to turn around and have Qi Leren, stuck in a female body for the second arc, spend the whole time bitching about how much it sucked to be a woman because they're so weak and pathetic and so on and so forth was... infuriating. There's also a predatory lesbian in the second arc. And also, I really hate Doctor Lu. I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to find him a cute and adorable character and he encourages the relationship between Qi Leren and Ning Zhou to develop, but at the same time, his encouragement comes off more as "delighting in someone else's misery" and he's so fucking obnoxious, especially in the way that he's constantly pushing Qi Leren into the dangerous situations because of his ability and digging pits for him and any fun he brings in is instantly drained because he will backpedal violently if any of his jokes get turned on him. He could've died in this first book and I would've given zero fucks. I may've even delighted in it.
YMMV heavily on whether or not any of the above is a problem and while it was frustrating to deal with it, the rest of this book is soo damned good that it can be seen past.
For one, the first arc was genuinely one of the best horror arcs I think I've ever experienced in these stories. I was genuinely concerned for how the characters were going to deal with these situations and survive. I was tense with them and every time Qi Leren experienced a death scene, I was on the edge of my seat, because his save/load feature, which could've easily been a broken ability, had so many limitations and restrictions on it, that it took some extremely clever maneuvering to use it properly, and unlike some stories I've read where the character has the ability to "survive" a death scene, Qi Leren is obviously dealing with some psychological trauma from dying repeatedly. It probably could've been a bit better developed or explored, but I understand why it wasn't. Also, this arc almost tricked me into believing that SuHe was the ML.
Secondly, while I recoiled from the idea of it at first, and I could complain for days about the instalove part of it, the emotional drama of Qi Leren and Ning Zhou both struggling with the fact that they fell in love with each other while believing they were women and then finding out that they were men and trying to reconcile that with the fact that they're both straight was actually really well done, especially when you include the very traditionally Catholic mindset that Ning Zhou was raised with.
All of this culminating in THAT ENDING, one big twist of which I guessed and was extremely validated to be right about (view spoiler) but just the way that ended... the set up... everything was perfectly constructed for some really good emotional drama and it was both very satisfying and made me desperately want to read the next book because oh my god.

that scene where Qi Leren wrote the 7 and then desperately regretted and was trying so hard to undo it because he knew that Ning Zhou was going to misunderstand it and be devastated over it and then literally everything with Ning Zhou (not) coping with believing Qi Leren was dead ffffffffffffffffffffffffff quality angst 10/10 so good

 Anyway, I really want to say this book was one of my favorites of 2021. I did have some serious feels. But at the same time, when the book was dragging, it really dragged, and there were some genuinely infuriating parts. I recommend it with the caveat that it is not, at all, perfect. 

 I don't know what else to say right now beyond the fact that I reached that last line and quite literally said "oh fuck you"

No, wait, I have two things:

Anisha is still the absolute perfect narrator and sells El's voice so well. 100/10. Stellar performance.

Novik, if I didn't need you to finish the next book so badly right now, I'd be showing up on your doorstep to fight you.