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Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'
The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Band 01 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
61 reviews
We stan Jin Ling’s uncle ;)
Graphic: Death, Violence
Moderate: Homophobia, Alcohol
Minor: Sexual harassment
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Violence, Blood, Murder
Moderate: Death
Minor: Death of parent, Alcohol
Moderate: Ableism, Biphobia, Body horror, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Blood, Murder, Alcohol, Classism
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Violence
Moderate: Homophobia, Murder, Alcohol
Minor: Child abuse, Torture, Death of parent, War
Attempt the impossible.
A few years ago I really, really tried to get into the tv show based on this book because so many of my friends were gushing about it. Long story short, I just couldn’t vibe with it despite trying. Recently, the same friends started talking about it again, and about the fanfic for it that they were reading and writing, and the fanfic sounded interesting enough that I thought, hey, maybe I should tackle the canon again to be in the know. Maybe it will work for me better in book form.
It… both did and didn’t work for me better in book form. The super amateurish translation sadly didn’t help—the resulting prose was of such low quality and full of such weird turns of phrase that it was legitimately hard to focus on reading. Instead of getting immersed into the story, I kept poking at odd sentences and/or thinking, “I wonder what the actual author meant to say here and what the effect would be if I could read it in Chinese“ (sadly, I don’t know Chinese).
But despite that, when I did manage to get immersed, it was pretty good? Wei Wuxian was an entertaining and interesting protagonist to follow, and I was fascinated by the worldbuilding. And the plotty bits were seriously good. Actually, in a weird turn of events, I was more interested in all the external/setting-focused plottiness than the relationship developments, especially when it came to the main relationship. Apparently, no matter the medium, the hype and I are just. Completely on different pages with this story. It’s strange, because the tropes here are the ones I usually enjoy, and the dynamic should be pulling me in, but every time the book focused on Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, I was like, “Yeah… cool… can we another evil ghost encounter or something now?“
Guess it’s one of those cases where a popular story just doesn’t resonate with me enough, but I’m still glad I gave it a chance and I’m actually interested in picking up some other danmei books now.
Graphic: Death, Violence, Alcohol
Moderate: Body horror, Homophobia, War
Minor: Death of parent
Minor: Body horror, Death, Violence, Murder, Alcohol, War
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Gore, Infidelity, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Alcohol, War
Unfortunately I can't rate it much higher because:
a) There's a lot of instances where the story flashes back to past events but the transition between past and present is clunky and left me scratching my head trying to figure out what happened where and when (even with a timeline of everything explained to me).
b) This is an extremely minor nitpick but there are so many instances Wei Wuxian is described as laughing or cackling in response to a lot of situations. This wouldn't be so bad if it was one or two situations but I feel like it's overdone to the point it feels like if anything mildly amusing happens, he'll be cackling like a hyena.
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Violence
Moderate: Homophobia, Murder, Alcohol
Minor: Torture, Death of parent, War
Moderate: Death
Minor: Alcohol
Graphic: Bullying, Death, Violence, Murder, Alcohol
Moderate: Homophobia, Suicide, Torture, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: War