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A review by axi_on
魔道祖师 by 墨香铜臭, Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
5.0
beautiful & engaging story that i felt was justttt shy of a 5 star read for me. this is going to be a long one where i talk myself in circles sorry in advance (ᵕ—ᴗ—)
mdzs had a lot that i really really loved- xiao xingchen’s backstory, wwx’s gradual loss of control, the nightless city massacre, and wangxian's dynamic (especially around wwx's full necro era) were all *exceptionally* done. but what really made mdzs for me is wei wuxian & jiang cheng's dynamic. god. i could write essays upon essays about how much these kids loved each other in the face of how much bullshit they had thrown at them. they both tried so hard man and sacrificed everything for the other and it just wasn't enough.
but i also feel like there was just a little something missing that kept mdzs as a whole from hitting as hard as i felt it had the potential to. there were a lot of moments where i felt mxtx pulled her punches, especially in volume 4 of the 7s translation, where a scene was super well done and very impactful but just fell slightly short from emotionally hitting. now, i don't need to be moved to tears every book (though it does help lol), but what i struggle with here was how close mdzs sent me without really landing the impact
there are two main problems i have with feeling like this-
one, this is very much a situation i fell into with mistborn where i read stormlight first and loved it more than life itself so immediately picked up mistborn but then could not stop myself from comparing everything to stormlight. like hero of ages is a definite 5 star read to me but it wasn't an easy 5 star for me, because it just didn't have that life-changing all-consumption that stormlight gave me and that i had in the back of my head while reading mistborn. in this situation tgcf is stormlight v2. i'm not saying either one is objectively better, but tgcf just has a very special place in my heart. i know it's not fair to either series to compare them just because they share an author, but it's also nearly impossible not to. and this part is 100% on me i absolutely should have waited a little longer before starting mdzs, but there was just so much crossover fanart/fiction with wangxian in it and i didn't want to spoil anything. so here i am
and two, and what i feel is truly the crux of the matter- i truly hesitate to hark on mdzs falling shy in a lot of powerful scenes because, as is the case with reading any translation, i have no way of knowing how much of this is a translation issue. were passages shortened by the translators and publishers? were sentences rich with allusion diluted into english? i have no idea, but probably! i know i mention this in nearly every review for a translated book, but i especially mention it here, as i know so many people had problems with the 7s translation. it kills me because i will never fully grasp the text as a native speaker and i know everything i read was marred by my inability to experience it as mxtx intended. i will never be able to truly feel the heart of the text as was devised, so how can i complain about it falling short?
the only two things i feel comfortable speaking on are the fight & sex scenes. for the fight scenes, i really wish they didn't all fade to black. this is especially the case with the siege of burial mounds and nightless city massacre, i would have killed to actually see peak broken wwx in action. for the sex scenes, i wish they did fade to black
mdzs had a lot that i really really loved- xiao xingchen’s backstory, wwx’s gradual loss of control, the nightless city massacre, and wangxian's dynamic (especially around wwx's full necro era) were all *exceptionally* done. but what really made mdzs for me is wei wuxian & jiang cheng's dynamic. god. i could write essays upon essays about how much these kids loved each other in the face of how much bullshit they had thrown at them. they both tried so hard man and sacrificed everything for the other and it just wasn't enough.
Spoiler
jiang cheng had his parents feeding into his insecurities with wwx 24/7 from day one (they can both go to hell btw), but he held strong because he knew wwx would stay by his side and support him. and then shit starts going down and he's still that young insecure boy but now he's in charge of the sect and has to make these rough decisions and wwx just isn't by his side anymore, and for wwx protecting the wens is right of course but fuck these poor kids are just stuck in constantly impossible situations and they can't even have each other. and then we get into the present and jc finally is confident in his role as head and he finds out its all bc of wwx's golden core. and he still can't tell wwx that he got captured leading the wens away from him. they could have both told each other ages ago!! but they just can't. i just. fuckbut i also feel like there was just a little something missing that kept mdzs as a whole from hitting as hard as i felt it had the potential to. there were a lot of moments where i felt mxtx pulled her punches, especially in volume 4 of the 7s translation, where a scene was super well done and very impactful but just fell slightly short from emotionally hitting. now, i don't need to be moved to tears every book (though it does help lol), but what i struggle with here was how close mdzs sent me without really landing the impact
there are two main problems i have with feeling like this-
one, this is very much a situation i fell into with mistborn where i read stormlight first and loved it more than life itself so immediately picked up mistborn but then could not stop myself from comparing everything to stormlight. like hero of ages is a definite 5 star read to me but it wasn't an easy 5 star for me, because it just didn't have that life-changing all-consumption that stormlight gave me and that i had in the back of my head while reading mistborn. in this situation tgcf is stormlight v2. i'm not saying either one is objectively better, but tgcf just has a very special place in my heart. i know it's not fair to either series to compare them just because they share an author, but it's also nearly impossible not to. and this part is 100% on me i absolutely should have waited a little longer before starting mdzs, but there was just so much crossover fanart/fiction with wangxian in it and i didn't want to spoil anything. so here i am
and two, and what i feel is truly the crux of the matter- i truly hesitate to hark on mdzs falling shy in a lot of powerful scenes because, as is the case with reading any translation, i have no way of knowing how much of this is a translation issue. were passages shortened by the translators and publishers? were sentences rich with allusion diluted into english? i have no idea, but probably! i know i mention this in nearly every review for a translated book, but i especially mention it here, as i know so many people had problems with the 7s translation. it kills me because i will never fully grasp the text as a native speaker and i know everything i read was marred by my inability to experience it as mxtx intended. i will never be able to truly feel the heart of the text as was devised, so how can i complain about it falling short?
the only two things i feel comfortable speaking on are the fight & sex scenes. for the fight scenes, i really wish they didn't all fade to black. this is especially the case with the siege of burial mounds and nightless city massacre, i would have killed to actually see peak broken wwx in action. for the sex scenes, i wish they did fade to black