Discussion A new trend?

Quite a few of the newly translated korean novels are basically poor imitations of western fantasy style.

Is it some kind of new popular trend and we will see more and more novels like these in the future?

Examples of such novels are 'Duke Pendragon', 'Reincarnation of the Swordmaster', I've also seen some others but don't remember the titles or simply didn't try to read them.

I'm not a fan of western fantasy's style. I wouldn't call it completely unreadable, but korean imitation of it is much worse though. It wouldn't even be a mistake to call authors following this trend delusional.

All these novels that I've come across have similar flaws:

• Nobles are more useless and obnoxious than even Chinese clans and arrogant young masters.
  
• Monsters don't follow any logic. Goblins can be described as experts, orcs as strong as dragons, or they will be presented as usual western style monsters but something will go wrong. Like a SUDDEN AND UNEXPECTED rise in strength and higher levels of intelligence. (Unexpected both for protagonist of the story and for readers).
  
• Planet-sized plot holes and absolutely illogical/delusional world-building. It really feels like authors are trying to make it as absurd as possible.

In 'Duke Pendragon' dukedom's capital was terrorised by a group of hundred shitty bandits, and in the reincarnation of the Swordmaster humans forgot everything about monsters and demons 50 years later after the war with them ended. They don't remember anymore how monsters looks like, how to fight them and what methods to use. There were a lot more absurd things in both novels, but I will not list them here.

You can come up with a better and more feasible world building by thinking a bit about it while sitting on your white throne.

I like Korean novels but this new trend annoys me a lot. These novels are like a trap. They look good, or at least normal at first, but a bit later (~30 chapters) into the story, it's becoming more and more obvious how irrational they are. Sometimes I really want to flip the table.

 

Duke pendragon also skips fight scenes

 

I wouldn't know about the western fantasy style since I don't do that genre. But I do agree the recent crop of KR novels mostly have some kinda fantasy western setting and are usually not up to the mark, the only exception being The Grand Prince Has Run Away.

Reincarnation of the Swordmaster was soporific, one of the very worst of the lot, while Duke Pendragon's reviews discouraged me from trying it out. A few others of the ilk, which I can't recall the names of, were not any better.

What I fail to understand is the lack (or more like complete absence of) any KR wuxia (that murim stuff) being translated since that is where Korean authors really shine.

 

yeah, the worst part is when the story is completely mediocre but people look up to it like it's the best thing ever because of the artstyle. Looking at you Solo Leveling.

 

The terrible thing is translated murim novels have horrible translations

 

Well, given their competition being an Isekai(JP) and cultivation(CN), its kinda hard for them to compete given that they have limited sources of originality left and aren't given any good inspiration other than noticing how popular some of their novels which were works of western. While I do find some hidden gems(my personal likes), it all boils down that they lack their own unique style which they can own for themselves and can only get imitations of other people's works at most.

 

Korean Cultivation is by far better than Chinese Cultivation

 

Not sure about that. Korean like use skill description to battle and beat enemies on dungeon. Well not sure if second coming gluttony, trash of count and infinite dungeon society include to cultivation novel.
Chinese still better on descript battle and high imagination like Martial World, unfortunately Chinese cultivation have too much chapter, and repetitive mostly...

 

I just wanna read a Korean novel that doesn’t have monsters/dungeons/leveling up for seemingly no reason outside of a game. It honestly feels like the equivalent of hero summoning in JP isekai. I don’t even really want subverted tropes at this point I just want something different

 

I've only scratched Korean novels and I've found that they have better writing than Japanese web novels. The problem though is that I sort of like reading trash Japanese webnovels. So I read Japanese novels with a light smattering of SFACG stuff for junk food, and for something a bit more substantial there are a million Chinese novels to read. It's already hard enough to justify reading Korean novels, but if the stuff in the OP is much of a thing with them, then there's yet more reason to stay away.

People don't even translate Chinese wuxia novels so why would it be surprising when that happens to Korean ones? Hell it's so bad that something like 90% of the threads on NUF about wuxia are started by people who have obviously never read wuxia before.

 

wdym Coiling Dragon is totally a wuxia bro /s
But yeah, just do a Wuxia + Completed search. Just 3 pages of result. And Wuxia + Completed - BL is just 2 pages. Only Wuxia is 10 pages. Wuxia might as well not exist on NU. Wuxia + Completed - BL + first chapter translated in 2020-21 => 5 results, 2 of which are smut and 1 is yuri (which is even rarer than wuxia, yuri+shoujo ai with no other filters is just 7 pages compared to wuxia's 10 pages).

 

Something like 80% of the wuxia books are mislabeled to begin with. Wuxia is not the same thing as martial arts but a lot of readers don't understand the difference. Outside of the Jin Yong and Gu Long novels there are indeed very few wuxia novels on NU. Most of these were translated 10+ years ago, so it's really rare nowadays.

At least with GL novels, these are being picked up at a regular pace and readers have no problem recognizing what is and isn't one. Having a very active GL megathread on NUF helps a lot in this.

 

i don't read much korean translated novels but I've started to see a lot of them. Giant plot holes are def annoying

 

The problem with korean and japanese novels are lousy translators choosing lousy novels while good novels are either don't get chosen or get horrible translation

 

I don't know about the Korean ones, but don't all the popular Japanese webnovels get translated one way or another? Is there some secret cache of high quality ones out there that no one knows about and aren't popular even in Japan or is what we get representative of what's out there?

 

dood based on years ago a translator comment about KR murim, there barely translator understand murim term~ these cat can only remember 2 murim story~ sword emperor on baka tsuki and asura something~ iirc dark mage later turn into fantasy despite mc background was a murim member and one of human faction leader also have murim background~ about sword aura thingy~ isn't most k translator pop up after kwave which more common with modern term? sure there also joseyon k drama tho~ still wuxia story on general not so popular among translator

one of wuxiaworld sin is make people think coiling dragon and bunch of wuxiaworld story is wuxia
poke @Wu Jizun