What's up with Chen Dong?

Chen Dong novels are actually good. One must not be so fixated on reviews made here. Just use it to get a general idea of novel but don't really judge a novel on it.
On a side, Shen Mu is one work of Chen Dong's which I dislike. It is made for people with special hobbies.

 

just because the translators translate too slowly

 

i avoid chen dong's stories mainly for 2-3 reasons:
1. he hates his MC's, he treats his MC's like shit. i don't care for such novels.
2. he tends to have his MC's have drastic and rapid character changes that make no sense other than to move the plot along.
3. he seems to have a thing for cockroach villains, i've gotten enough of them from western novels, don't need more of them and at least they make it work. for most of these CN it's not a big deal as they usually die at the end of an arc, but when chen dong and a few others, they'll break the plot just to keep a villain in, or pull bullshit so bad makes you wanna drop the story.

slow pacing isn't really a problem for me except at the start, but i normally give these CN's 50-100 chapters before i drop em. so i'm usually able to build momentum to read the story. as for chen dong novels, well once i hit that wall known as latest translated chapter, if i stop to build up chapters i just never have the urge to return.

anyways those are my reason i don't read chen's novels. i don't judge him though. if he's managed to work his way to the top then a guess i'm the minority.

 

Spoiler

you mean giving him some hard obstacles along his road of gaining treasures left and right ?
If you meant Shen Mu though then I can understand.

Spoiler

I know you're talking about PW because I've seen this complain alot on the review page, the child has changed his mind from pure adorable baby to a killing machine that want to steal every treasure...
I don't know if you ever thought about it but when a child grow up he might undergo different stages in life, I was pretty hyper active as a child but now I'm a bookworm lol...

anyway this complain seem ridiculous for PW MC as he still stay kind toward his village but knows he have to be tough to outsiders because he seen those outsiders try to rob and kill the village and would have succeeded without the Willow tree interventions.

Spoiler

Ok, The villain female in World of immortals was really annoying during the first 60 chapters, I wished I could strangle her right there but the author introduced status Quo between them later and she turned into a fodder starting from where they left the island for hundreds of chapters until she got her death.
For PW I guess the villain you're talking about is Shi Yi, while he was somehow annoying he was nowhere near as annoying as he could have been, he got lost into the story after his death and returned later on as ally, he later sacrificed his life to save MC/world, thats remarkable in a CN, I think thats what Chen Dong intended to do, break cliche
As for Shen Mu... No idea but the reputation of the novel precede it lol even in Chinese novels they say it has a very slow build up

Spoiler

I respect that.

 

with PW, the MC not only had a major character change into a greedy asshole (pretty extreme for someone so young) but his intelligence dropped. he could have had so many opportunities in that special world the tree took him too, but for some reason he got it in his mind to get himself kicked out. i can't help but feel that bit was forced. (i never really dropped PW though, more like i took a break to let the slow releases build up and never felt like reading it again. still don't.)

funny thing is, as much as i hated that bitch in shen mu (that selfish princess was annoying), the story pulled me in from the beginning unlike his other stories but due to unstable translations i just left it in the hole it fell into and never came back.

 

I have a hard time reading Sacred Ruins. TBH I think the first chapter wasn't translated very well on Qidian and I have a hard time moving past that :-/
Shrouding the heavens is great! I just wish it was updated faster Perfect world is also very good with a memorable protagonist.

 

I'm actually reading the raw chapter.
I just check the translation on the first chapter and it horrible. Look like they just straight translate word for word.

 

I find his works pretty good except Shen mu. World of immortals can be annoying at times though

 

I emailed qidian when Sacred Ruins came out pointing out the issues with the first chapter but never received response. Even their description has a problem:
Qidian Watch as the moon wanes and grows
Should be : Watch as the moon waxes and wanes (I switched waxes and wanes since it's usually listed that way in english)

 

Perfect World I guess?

 

Bueno me gustan sus novelas, o me gustaron, siempre tienen un maldito final, a partir de ahí ya no leo
Lo siento, mi inglés es malo

 

y este es el caso en casi el 80% de todas las novelas que leo, siempre un final terrible

 

I'll also say that The Great Ruler is another novel of his that I enjoy alot. I think he would be more popular if his novels were updated quicker (BTTH and WDQK) being the exceptions).

Chen Dong novels are like Mao Ni novels and Heavenly Silkworm Potatoes novels. Either you like them or you don't! There doesn't seem to be much in-between.

Mao Ni and Chen Dong are both heavily dependent on the translator. A poor translator can butcher those two authors easily.

Silkworm....ahhh not so much

Edit: LOL I didn't realize this thread had been bumped way up from the past

 

I just looked over The Sacred Ruins but, sadly, the translation seems to be the overly-literal kind that I don't like to read. It's probably "accurate" in the sense of them translating every phrase but when you do that it sounds weird in English. It's not super horrible though, the one chapter I checked was readable.

 

Well, this is interesting. I liked the novels I read of his (Perfect World, World of Immortals, Shrouding the Heavens) - they all have interesting ideas and decent execution. However, they move slowly (because most CN web novels do) and have had slow/irregular translation updates. That makes them hard to enjoy as a reader because the cliffs and filler take too long to resolve. When they stretch out long enough, I forget the earlier parts, and they're slow enough that I don't really feel like reading them again to refresh myself.

I think being slow and having lots of filler is common to most Chinese web novels though, so I guess they just need fast translations or wait for entire arcs to be translated instead of reading at every release.

 

Readerz, this was a super old thread. The Sacred Ruins has another translator helping out and it is a worthwhile read...now The early issues have been resolved. My biggest complaint now, as it is with most Qidian International translations, is the lack of proof-editing. There are way too many stupid grammar errors that should have been resolved before releasing each chapter.