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A review by mesal
The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu
adventurous
funny
3.0
Despite the pretty decent rating you can see I've given this book, I count The Art of Prophecy as one of my worst reads of the year. This is primarily due to the hype surrounding it: the book has been lauded by friends and strangers alike, it has an average rating of 4.11 stars (not a small feat!), and its premise—with a wrongly chosen Chosen One and a famed war artist long past her prime deciding to train him into shape—promises a great time to anyone who enjoys martial arts in a fantasy setting. All of the above made my expectations skyrocket, leading only to a steeper disappointment when I realized just how badly the potential for an excellent story had been fumbled.
Chu's writing style depends upon his audience's familiarity with webtoons and webnovels. Without that familiarity, it honestly reads like a badly written book that somehow made it past the usual barriers to traditional publication. Not only is its style very simple, with the written word as a medium being used as nothing more than a functional tool to get the story across, but it's also written very lazily: the reliance on readers' knowledge of general webnovel tropes and conventions means we often get sentences like this
Chu's writing style depends upon his audience's familiarity with webtoons and webnovels. Without that familiarity, it honestly reads like a badly written book that somehow made it past the usual barriers to traditional publication. Not only is its style very simple, with the written word as a medium being used as nothing more than a functional tool to get the story across, but it's also written very lazily: the reliance on readers' knowledge of general webnovel tropes and conventions means we often get sentences like this
Lunging Snake in the Weeds was countered by Crane Waves at Starlight, just as Cutting the Giant's Knees was countered by Sweep the Floors
without any explanation of what the above-named martial arts moves (for that is what they are) actually look like. Such sentences make up a substantial portion of the fight scenes in this book, actually. And when the moves aren't named, we get phrases like "a flurry of punches" and "moved with a mastery of space and distance" that also tell us nothing about what the battles really look like.
Issues with writing style extend to the way in which the different points of view are presented. My problem is specifically with Jian's chapters: while everyone else's usually (if not always) make it sound like the narrator and the character are one and the same—even if in third person—with Jian it seems as if a separate adult narrator is presenting his life to the reader. This does make his chapters funnier, what with his boyish foibles and misplaced pride being ridiculed; however, it creates a disconnect between narrator and character which, when compared to the other perspectives, is confusing to see.
The characters themselves were supposed to be unique, but the one similarity they all shared—being good at fighting—dampened the parts of their personalities that were meant to make them stand out. Tianshi is a great fighter; Salminde is a great fighter; Qisami is a great fighter; Jian is a great fighter-in-training (in spite of his introduction as a terrible one; the moment he ends up at that war arts school he's suddenly hiding his true talents and generally acting like your average great-fighter-in-training in disguise). If they all had to be exceptional at something, did it have to be the same thing each time, regardless of the fact that they were all trained in different methods of killing? Couldn't a single one of the main cast have been good at, say, scholarship?
Inconsistencies within the plot and a severe lack of development of character relationships, especially regarding side characters—but also prominent within the main cast—make up the bulk of my remaining complaints with this book. (Really, the plotline regarding the temple's whereabouts was abysmal. It's one thing to say that the location of your religion's most revered temple has been lost to time; it's quite another to claim that the same temple is visited regularly by pilgrims and yet somehow—at the same time—nobody knows where it is. Tianshi's whole journey to said temple, a good third of the plot, was based on this one weird contradiction.) The reason I've given this book the rating I did instead of my originally intended two stars is because it did get much more engaging nearer the end, with me genuinely wanting to find out how the story unfolded. I just think the novel could have been better than it turned out.
If you're wondering whether The Art of Prophecy is for you, read the following quote. If absolutely nothing about it bothers you, then you might enjoy this book! If you're like me, read something else instead.
Issues with writing style extend to the way in which the different points of view are presented. My problem is specifically with Jian's chapters: while everyone else's usually (if not always) make it sound like the narrator and the character are one and the same—even if in third person—with Jian it seems as if a separate adult narrator is presenting his life to the reader. This does make his chapters funnier, what with his boyish foibles and misplaced pride being ridiculed; however, it creates a disconnect between narrator and character which, when compared to the other perspectives, is confusing to see.
The characters themselves were supposed to be unique, but the one similarity they all shared—being good at fighting—dampened the parts of their personalities that were meant to make them stand out. Tianshi is a great fighter; Salminde is a great fighter; Qisami is a great fighter; Jian is a great fighter-in-training (in spite of his introduction as a terrible one; the moment he ends up at that war arts school he's suddenly hiding his true talents and generally acting like your average great-fighter-in-training in disguise). If they all had to be exceptional at something, did it have to be the same thing each time, regardless of the fact that they were all trained in different methods of killing? Couldn't a single one of the main cast have been good at, say, scholarship?
Inconsistencies within the plot and a severe lack of development of character relationships, especially regarding side characters—but also prominent within the main cast—make up the bulk of my remaining complaints with this book. (Really, the plotline regarding the temple's whereabouts was abysmal. It's one thing to say that the location of your religion's most revered temple has been lost to time; it's quite another to claim that the same temple is visited regularly by pilgrims and yet somehow—at the same time—nobody knows where it is. Tianshi's whole journey to said temple, a good third of the plot, was based on this one weird contradiction.) The reason I've given this book the rating I did instead of my originally intended two stars is because it did get much more engaging nearer the end, with me genuinely wanting to find out how the story unfolded. I just think the novel could have been better than it turned out.
If you're wondering whether The Art of Prophecy is for you, read the following quote. If absolutely nothing about it bothers you, then you might enjoy this book! If you're like me, read something else instead.
It was early into the night and Salminde the Viperstrike, hailing from the Katuia clan and capital city of Nezra, had just settled into her sleep sack after a long day of travel, and within moments was already flirting with Zharia, the spirit storyteller of dreams. Though her mind was at rest, Sali, as she was known to those with whom she shared a hearth, had never felt as awake as she did at that moment with her barely conscious mind soaking in the sounds and sensations of the Grass Sea.
So?