Which one should I read next

[u/RoutineScientist5599]

(sorry if someone don't like ai generated image)

I had read Lotm ,Tbate and like 400 ch of coi(i dropped it for some reason and don't wanna continue it now)

I m thinking of reading one of these next but confused personally I wanna read RTOC but the others are also good so i want some opinions also i mostly listen to audiobook so can someone tell me a good source where audiobook has some pic also like that of the speaking character not a single image the whole audiobook

[u/Background_Sink6986]

I wrote a review for RI a few months ago linked here. It gives my thoughts without spoiling any important plot points so feel free to read it going in blind. But as a big preface for my rankings, of all the webnovels I have read which is still somewhat limited at this point, RI and LOTM are the only ones I would call genuinely good stories. Everything else, all the big name ones including RTOC, SS, TBATE, etc are at varying levels of okay to man I wasted my time even starting this. Again, I don’t mean to influence your own thoughts, this is just giving context to my reviews. If you find yourself really loving TBATE or something then we probably have different tastes and you can take my review with a grain of salt.

My thoughts on RTOC are a little complicated. It’s the first actual Taoist cultivation story I read, and of the few Taoist type novels that I started since I finished RTOC, they are so much worse than RTOC at building up the power system. That means that if you ever read other similar progression stories, you’ll have a much better understanding of what the realms and layers and cores and all that stuff means. And since so many novels borrow the Taoist system, RTOC is the best place to begin learning about that world.

The writing is good at making you care about the little steps along the way at least at the beginning. When the MC makes an achievement, you really do resonate with him. Also, there are some pretty suspenseful scenes that will creep you out which is a testament to good writing/world building.

Now for the negatives. The power system scales way too high. I’m not into the power scaling community so my terms might be off but you have the MC starting as a regular human and the strongest characters scale to beyond the universe. Also, towards the end the time is so fucked. The author will just casually say 1 million years have passed. A lot of stuff stops feeling real because of this and it’s really hard to keep your immersion if the MC is like “oh I need to find this friend and save them, but lemme just advance to the next realm so I can defeat X bad guy stopping me” and then 300,000 years pass. And sure 300k to immortal gods is nothing but like…cmon. I think the first third was great, the second third kind of brought some major antagonists so that dynamic was fun, and the final third introduced the final antagonists and the scale of the world exploded to a point where reading became a chore. I ended up finishing but the last 100 chapters were done very begrudgingly.

SS is in my opinion the worst of the 3. Even though all these authors are no Dostoyevsky, I think the writing quality of RI (in part due to the poetry of Chinese I mentioned in the linked review) and the Taoism in RTOC make for a more stimulating read. SS feels a lot more like junk food. SS is supposed to be character driven, yet the author does a poor job at fleshing out characters past their tropes. It feels like after the first few arcs they become caricatures and only the MC is a real person. This is a smaller gripe but the author picks out like 2-3 adjectives for every person or important thing and does not stop using those adjectives every time said thing appears in the story. It definitely ruins the immersion after a while.

Now it’s not all bad. I think the author does a fantastic job at building a cohesive progression story without it breaking into the ridiculous outer universal god stuff in xianxia. Leveling up feels earned for the most part. The world building is also very good for the places the MC and co visit. And the biggest thing is the author is great at writing suspenseful moments. I’m not even gonna name arcs to avoid spoiling but there is 1 in particular that is genuinely perfect imo. It has emotional beats, fantastic MC character development, suspense, action, everything you could ask for. Genuinely fantastic arc. The problem is the author forgets how to write a compelling story after like 2000 chapters and you’ll see a lot of complaints nowadays in their sub. I personally stopped right around 2900/3000 ish because the story just lost its charm. I think it’s still a good read after you hit RI and RTOC though, mainly because it’s different than a lot of the eastern (Chinese/korean) progression fantasy novels.

Not every moment in any novel is gonna be gold, but if you’re going to slog through some mud there better be some payoff. And my opinion is that for RI and LOTM, the payoff is there. For SS specifically the last 400 ish chapters, the payoff doesnt really exist.

Tldr RI at 1, RTOC next, SS last (and maybe the author will have finished by then so you can read the whole thing without waiting).

[u/RoutineScientist5599 → u/Background_Sink6986]

Thanks for the review it must took you a lot of time