I've read Desolate Era and I'm currently reading Lord Xue Ying up to chapter 810, two novels written by I Eat Tomatoes. I've very much enjoyed these two novels, especially the first half of each novel. So don't mistake me as a hater as I genuinely do like these novels. My problems with his works arises once it gets towards the end of the novel though, IET makes his MC's every action take years, decades, centuries, and millions of years. The MC could be reading a cultivation scroll in closed seclusion and it will take a million years. If he wants to talk to his friend, he'll talk to his friend for 80 years. Is there a tournament going on? It'll be 10 years of non-stop fighting to get to the final matches. Traveling to the next world or planet can take billions of years. A trillion years to have a breakthrough. Even having a new idea can take thousands of years. The author inflates time so much that he loses his common sense. I understand that he's doing this to convey difficulty, complexity, or magnitude in cultivation or events. For example, "Wow the MC took 1000 years to break this formation, it must have been a super profound formation and he must have had a super smart idea to break through it." " It took the MC one million years to travel to the next world while riding his super fast ship, wow it must be a very far distance." "The MC created this technique after spending a billion years and two other clones working on it at the same time, it's some super profound and complex technique." It's completely jarring and as a reader, I have to really suspend my disbelief when it happens. I'm suppose to just accept that a million years, a billion years, or a trillion years passes by and nothing has changed in that time? It really loses my immersion in a story when the MC has a timeskip and nothing ever happens like the world revolves around him, I know as readers we know that the world literally does revolve around them, but it's also really immature writing in my opinion. The MC doesn't have a personality change, he doesn't have new hobbies, he has no change in interests, and it feels like you might as well have not had a timeskip if nothing changed anyways. There's a quote that goes something like, "It takes 10,000 hours to be an expert on something". The MC spends trillions of years alive and sure you don't have to be the foremost expert in that thing in the entire universe, but at least be somewhat informed about a little of everything? Yes the MC has to focus on his cultivation, but the MC will naturally learn something new as he ages forever. Another problem in these two novels, the MC is guzzling down wine the entire time from his gourd or flask for apparently no reason. IET just bans tea, juice, soda, water, or literally any other alcoholic drink and just has his MC drink gallons of wine for every setting. He's better with this all this stuff before he leaves the starting world, but once the MC gets to outer space, it might as well be a wine drinking robot that just cultivates until the next battle. If you're reading the novels, take note on how many times the author shoehorns in drinking wine in every setting. My last problem with these two novels is the MC's utter obsession with just one girl. I'm not alluding to IET's indifference to harems, but the possibility of the MC developing new feelings for a different girl or losing his feelings for the female lead. I like the fact that in both of these novels the MC is devoted to just one girl, it's more romantic than having a harem of girls. It gives me these warm and fuzzy feelings when the MC falls in love. It doesn't make any sense how the author handles relationships at the end stage of the novels though. Desolate Era was nice in that the first jade beauty he likes wasn't the main girl he ends up with, it was like the biggest plot twist of the novel in my opinion. Then it becomes silly when he meets girls who are better than his dead wife in every way and made more memories with them only to have zero romantic thoughts about them. Okay you don't have to have be in some sacred duo-cultivation relationship, but you can at least enjoy yourself and try to have a family with them? Fine, maybe Ji Ning doesn't have space in his heart for other girls after his dead wife. But other characters in his novel are the same way as well, their duo cultivation partner died early and billions/trillions of years later they never have any romantic feelings for another person. There's not even some kind of law or something in nature that forbids having more than one duo cultivation partner after the previous one dies. The characters will feel pain when thinking about their lover or feel wistful about relationships, but no curiosity in any new relationship? What made them have a relationship in the first place? Is there no other girl in the entire galaxy that is similar or better to your current/ex love interest? In Lord Xue Ying, billions of years pass and the only thing Xue Ying and his wife do is just occasionally discuss some plot point. You cant even tell if they are husband and wife; although, it's not like the wife has any personality at that point anyways. Thank you for reading this and letting me vent to you guys. I made this account on here just so I can get these pet peeves of mine off my chest. Feel free to mention any pet peeves or rants you guys have these two novels or any other novels/authors/tropes.
Holy shit that is real retarded, those timeskips sound so silly that any interest I had in reading those novels before completely evaporated.. Thanks for the heads up
the wine thing is due to how xianxia has it's roots from wuxia. xianxia is basically the child of wuxia that nobody liked until around, 10 years ago or so in china since everyone who reads wuxia, would read the wuxia from the big 3, and has also influenced every other wuxia writer, they are usually...or always... set in medival/ancient china, where there is nothing but wine and water. but yea, the romance in IET novels are really bad. it was okay-ish in DE cus...she was dead.... but the thing that i disliked the most is how the daughter was never important. i get that he had a clone by her side but the clone was there in secret most of the time and she did not play any part in the story besides oh shes doing xx shes doing yy shes doing zz now. ji ning didnt even care about his wife until he failed the dao merge and then she suddenly pops up in the story! sure he wrote that she was his goal or wahtever blahblah i cant rmb but the fact is that for the past 1000+ chapters, she was never mentinoed and ji ning had so many other reasons to do what he did besides saving her..
I still highly recommend these novels, every novel has their faults and the majority of these two novels is still better than 90% of other novels on here. It's well written and I encourage you to read them despite my problems with them. Yeah, I forgot about little interactions Ji Ning had with his daughter in the novel. Ji Ning had such a well written relationship with his parents in the story, but IET couldn't do the same for Ji Ning's daughter. I can understand the wine thing I guess, it was the same for medieval western times where the alcohol content in beer was high enough to kill germs, but it was also low enough that it didn't make you drunk quickly if you drank it. So low class people who drank beer was healthier than people drinking water.
I actually like the time skips. To me it’s a lot more believable that it will take thousands of years to become an immortal rather then the 3-5 years it takes for a regular xianxia MC.
I like that it takes a long time for the MC to become the strongest as well, but you missed my point. The time skips are completely useless, nothing happens or changes during the time skips. 1 second is no different than a 10 year, 1000 year, 1 billion, and 99 trillion year time skips. The author wanted to randomly use some big number but it ruins any immersion and enjoyment I had in the story. It's inconsistent with the author's own logic as well, because in the beginning of the stories he has really good grasp of time. The MC goes from a innocent baby to an experienced war hero in 20-30 years. So in 20-30 years the MC had so much happen to him and in the story, but in the next arc of the story it takes 1 trillion years for the MC to compete in a tournament. It's like if the story and the world was paused instead of fast forwarded during that time skip. During the 1 trillion years he didn't make any new friends, he didn't go learn the piano or how to build a house, he didn't go play chess for fun, he didn't date or fall in love with anyone, literally nothing happened. So what was the point? There was no point to the time skip. The author used arbitrary big numbers as a way to convey complexity and difficulty to point of devaluing any meaning of time. Any future use of seconds, minutes, hours, days, and months are completely meaningless. Who cares if the MC does anything for less than a millennium? Earlier in the story he stayed at an inn for 55 billion years and drank wine. Imagine if a time skip of 20 years happened to you, how different would you be and the world around you be? 20 years ago we didn't have smart phones or internet like today. I know it's just a story and this is normal in xianxia, but that's what kills my enjoyment and any immersion I had in the story. I've dropped a few stories because they have meaningless time skips.
To me the whole appeal of xianxia and its related genres are the fact that these people are nigh immortal gods. I don’t expect gods with near infinite lifespans to change in a few years like humans do. I get what you’re saying and you’re right but the xianxia genre is not about normal humans with a short 90 year lifespan. I think you’ll like wuxia a lot more.
Yeah, what really pissed me of was that his daughter walked out of the V as a seven year old with the same amount of wisdom like it’s all natural. Sure, I understand they are ‘Higher Dimensional’ beings and whatnot. However, that was lazy writing. Couldn’t he have written a ‘child rearing’ arc or something. This is a area where IET falls short compared to Er Gen. Just the one arc and Er Gen created a strong father character for Meng Hao. Yet, IET did not write anything to strengthen the attachment to JN daughter. However, BXC children were not well written so that a minus from Er Gen I can continue to rant on for a while....