This review starts with my clicking on your link.
First impressions,
the title of your story leads me to expect a fast paced weak-to-strong adventure or a power fantasy.
The cover is fairly plain. Figure looks like a girl, but there are no boobs, thus, giving me hope that your novel is decent. Hence, although the cover adds little to the presentation of your novel and nothing to reader expectations, it at least does not take away from them either.
Reading the
blurb, I notice your emperor is called Taizong. As someone with a smidgen of historical knowledge, the name evokes the historical Tang Supreme Ancestor aka Tang Taizong. And since you also mention Huang Chao, I am happy to see your Wuxia novel is set after the late Tang. Thus, I now expect an alternative take on history from someone with decent knowledge of Chinese history.
In general, your blurb reads almost like a prologue, dumping the setting of your novel on me. If your focus were on writing Historical Fiction instead of Action, that's what I might expect.
Fortunately for you, I have read and enjoyed plenty of Qidian novels with premises such as "Romance of the Three Kingdoms but Liu Bei dies in the first chapter". Thus, I am familiar with the genre expectations of Chinese Historical Fiction.
Your tags, genres, and content warnings do not match the impression of a scholarly historical novel that your blurb conveyed. They speak of action and glorious gore. A reader coming to find such things will be confused by your blurb.
Looking at your
table of contents, I am delighted to see it is well-organized.
Let's move on to the
first chapter.
His chief amusement lied in nitpicking their words for things at which to take offense, only to laugh it off and pretend that he had merely been speaking in jest.
This line made me smirk. Quite a few protagonists come to mind who do exactly that.
As for minor nitpicks:
Wei Qing clenched his beard. The slight nervousness he felt was instantly evaporated by the heat of his excitement.
Although, he was still at a loss about what he should have done next. As he hesitated, the woman turned away and followed the proprietor upstairs.
The marked sentence flows a little awkwardly. It is either incomplete or in the wrong tense. Give it an edit. Simplest change would be:
Although, he was still at a loss as to what he should do next.
Even had the darkness been absolute, he would need only to feel the outline of a stranger's body no more than once for the location of all of their pressure points to reveal itself within his mind's eye.
Change that to:
Even had the darkness been absolute, he would need only to feel the outline of a stranger's body no more than once for the locations of all of their pressure points to reveal themselves within his mind's eye.
I believe you meant inconceivable since unconceivable is quite rare in standard usage and conveys a slightly different nuance where used.
In the unforgivingly precise art of pressure point sealing techniques, such things were practically unconceivable.
Having finished your first chapter, or I suppose the first part of the first chapter, I am a little disappointed that it does not match the style used in your synopsis. Your descriptions of the people and their behavior are very lifelike, so you are certainly not an unskilled writer. However, the description of Wei Qing's death did not feel particularly exciting.
More importantly, I do not quite understand where those stab wounds came from, her toe nails? However, stab wounds in the armpits would not be examined by lifting up the corpse's shirt.
Suddenly, he felt something digging into his armpits. He found himself getting lifted up off the bed. [...]
As his head collided with the door, his neck broke instantly. But even if Wei Qing had had the rest of his natural lifespan to mull over that night's events, he would not have ever arrived at the conclusion that it was the woman who had lifted up her legs, dug her toes into his armpits and flung him across the room with humongous power.
[...]
Guo squatted down next to Wei Qing's corpse. He gently lifted up a part of the dead man's gray shirt, examining a dot of blood seeping through. "He was stabbed by a blade no wider than a finger. I can see five wounds at least."
The chapter felt neither like the first chapter of a grand historical epos nor that of a blood-curdling or adrenaline-fueled Wuxia adventure.
Chapter 2 or I suppose the second part of your first chapter: I will not bother with nitpicking punctuation mistakes and such. This level is fine for a webnovel, but if you ever publish your novel elsewhere, get a proofreader to fix those minor details for you. Of course, you could also consult
this article to fix some of them.
I enjoyed your second chapter infinitely more than your first chapter. It was interesting. Personally, and I am giving my personal opinion here, I would shorten your first chapter to a minimum and start with the second chapter.
Chapter III: I suppose this chapter somewhat answers my question from the first chapter:
"I did not use any techniques. I just threw him."
"But, uh..." Bai Guo meekly protested. "I saw a few puncture wounds on Wei Qing's body."
"Would you really describe that as a technique...? I imitated the pressure point sealing strikes he performed on me as I threw him out."
However, I do not recall any mention of that during the description of the fight scene in the first chapter. You may want to at least hint at it, lest it feel like a retcon.
Just as they were about to part ways, the senior spoke up. "And also, buy a shovel."
That line made me chuckle. What an ominous thing to say to someone.
All in all, your third chapter was an enjoyable read.
Chapter IV: You are keeping my attention just fine. Which is why I can only seriously recommend you edit your first chapter. Compared to chapters three and four, it is too lackluster.
Chapter V: Interesting. Your novel may need the Mystery genre tag.
Chapter VI-X: Overall, I enjoyed reading the arc. Chapter IX felt less polished than the preceding chapters.
Some educational nitpicks for IX:
The masked woman picked up the sword that lied in the blood pooling up around Liao Cai's corpse.
The past tense of lie as it pertains to resting, particularly on the ground, is
lay. Lied is the past tense for the verb to lie, as in, to tell a falsehood.
Since this is tagged as a classic, I would expect you to use the
subjunctive mood where appropriate:
"Evenly matched? If that was the case, wouldn't the sword get somewhat bent at most? If it was made of a brittle or inflexible material like wood I can maybe understand, but how can high quality steel that carried my internal energy just snap like a matchstick? Not to mention that she stifled my sect's Iron Butterfly Flicker technique with just her sleeve... Maybe I could do that to a novice, but no one in the entire world can use this technique better than me!"
One possible way to change this would be:
"Evenly matched? If that were the case, wouldn't the sword get somewhat bent at most? If it had been made of a brittle or inflexible material like wood, I could maybe understand, but how can high quality steel that carries my internal energy just snap like a matchstick? Not to mention that she stifled my sect's Iron Butterfly Flicker technique with just her sleeve... Maybe I could do that to a novice, but no one in the entire world can use this technique better than me!"
Can and carried need to match for it to flow properly. Hence, you could also opt for 'could', 'carried', and 'have snapped'. However, give the whole paragraph a polish. It does not match up to the level of the rest of your dialogue.
And, perhaps, for the sake of readability break up long paragraphs like that. For example:
"So I assumed there was some technique I didn't know about that let someone make use of it. And therefore there's a reason you had to take the women away instead of just killing them on the spot. I always had a hunch, but your little skirmish with the Desolator of Life made me all but certain. You couldn't handle all that foreign yin energy entering your body all at once, so you had to pace yourself. And with the amount that you ended up with, it would take decades even for me to tame it all. And you didn't even have the wisdom to recognize that you weren't truly making it yours. You were alleviating the symptoms while letting the disease fester. It's true that you had more internal energy than me, but not only couldn't you use most of it, you couldn't even stop it from hurting you!"
"So, I assumed there was some technique I didn't know about that let someone make use of it. And, therefore, there should be a reason you had to take the women away instead of just killing them on the spot.
"I always had a hunch, but your little skirmish with the Desolator of Life made me all but certain. You couldn't handle all that foreign yin energy entering your body all at once, so you had to pace yourself.
"With the amount that you ended up with, it would have taken decades even for me to tame it all. However, you didn't even have the wisdom to recognize that you weren't truly making it yours. You were alleviating the symptoms while letting the disease fester.
"It's true that you had more internal energy than me, but not only couldn't you use most of it, you couldn't even stop it from hurting you!"
All in all, it was not a bad read. Your dialogues are lively and generally interesting. Describing people and their actions is something you clearly excell at. And most importantly, you seem to possess a good amount of background knowledge. You are clearly not ignorant of Chinese culture. Or perhaps you are a diligent researcher. With these strengths you can absolutely write an excellent Wuxia novel.
However, your blurb does not sell what you have to offer. Your first arc does not read like the arc of a work focused on history. Instead it gives of a sense of Wuxia, mystery, and adventure. Change your blurb.
Likewise, your first chapter is too stale. Your latter chapters clearly show me that you are capable of writing riveting fight scenes and humorous dialogue, hence, you absolutely must make use of those skills in your first chapter.
Many people read more than one chapter and those people will become your readers. Nonetheless, with a good first chapter you can catch some of those fickle folks who judge a novel's merits based on but one chapter.
That aside, you could polish your writing by mastering the finer points of English grammar and punctuation. Your current level is sufficient for a Wuxia novel, but someone who so skillfully paints a scene should not be content with that level.
To conclude, all the ingredients are there and you prepared a tasty home-cooked meal. It would not appease Gordon Ramsey, but so long as you fix your blurb and first chapter, your pub may very well become very popular. And yet someone with such a refined palate could aim for greater heights. The way you describe people is beautiful. I will give you a tentative 3.5/5.
