I’m on chapter 16 out of over 1400 and so far I’m not disliking the vibes, I’m intrigued enough to read more but it hasn’t been a perfect read so far. I’m unaware if that’s because of Cuttlefish’s writing or because this translation is like…rocky. I can’t say how well it’s translated because well…I don’t know mandarin, but the translation I’m reading (epub of the one on Webnovel) is like full of grammar errors, weird vocabulary, stiff dialogue, and just elementary level mistakes.

The quality of translations when it comes to Chinese web novels is always something I’ve been miffed when since I’ve started reading xianxia and xuanhaun novels, but usually I can get by. But here there’s just spots where I can’t ignore it and writing that is supposed to be serious or incite mystery comes off us unintentionally hilarious.

I will say if there’s two things that I had to be critical of when it came to Cuttlefish’s writing it’s that, while I love similes, they sometimes use similes that are really long and don’t make sense in the context of the situation. This is a small thing and inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. The second complaint would be the very long multi-paragraph dumps of exposition that happen either through dialogue or Klein’s own thoughts.

Considering this is a fantasy world where we’re new to it, just as new as Klein is to it, some exposition here and there doesn’t bother me. But when it happens a lot and can even be very random history dumps about the world that aren’t needed in the context of the situation, then it can get tiring.

Like here. Mingrui gets a memory fragment from Klein and learns about the origination of tarot in this world and how similar they are to the ones on Earth. Leading Mingrui to theorizing that Roselle is possibly also someone who transmigrated like he did.

That’s interesting, that holds a lot of mystery and makes me want to know more about Roselle! But what was not needed (at least in my view) was the almost 4 paragraphs of history about Roselle including his conquests, a church receiving a hold revelation (nothing to do with Roselle), the era of colonialism, and tidbits about his marine fleet.

This is something that happens multiple times. Where Cuttlefish has Mingrui speculate about the history of something or Mingrui is having difficulty settling to the new world around him and Mingrui will just go on 3-4 paragraph thought exposition dumps that clearly are trying to flesh out the world, which is cool, but it’s like an overload of information and it feels like a tour guide is talking to me rather than someone trying to figure out a mystery or the wonder of the world around them.