Review Detail of Jezzekiel in Lord of Enigma
Review detail
Before you read, or most likely skim, please take notes of a few things beforehand. 1) this is my opinion on this novel. It is subjective, as all opinions are by default, so please avoid getting too butt-hurt or offended. 2) lots of readers seem to be exaggerating the "brilliance" of this novel, or saying that it should be picked and fully translated. My opinion on this is a complete contrast. This novel, from what I can gather, has not been well thought out, and the author's execution of the most basic descriptions is a bigger joke than the Brine King's moveset. 3) yes, like others, I did compare some aspects of this novel to LotM (Lord of the Mysteries). This is because there is an outstanding similarity between not only the title of the novel, but the core concepts of the two. When presented with a counterfeit and an outstanding original, a person with a functioning brain would most definitely pick the latter. If they had both, they would not be able to stop themselves from comparing the two. Admittedly, I myself am one to compare the two, but the points I've conveyed do not merely say, "LotM is better compared to this novel, and therefore LoE is ****." I merely use LotM to explain to my fellow Cuttlefish fans how things could have been done in a better way. 4) if you've not gathered already, several walls of text follow. Skim if you're just asking for a completely unbiased opinion on the first few chapters. READ IN FULL DETAIL IF YOU PLAN ON REFUTING WHAT I SAY. This is for all of us, for rebuking a review, only to find out that what you've said has been mentioned and explained, yet you failed to notice due to skim-reading is a massive waste of everyone's time. Thank you for your consideration. I hope. Translation Quality: 4 stars Few mistakes. Grammar seems to be fairly consistent. Aside from occasional missing punctuation, there's not much to say here. Stability of Updates: 5 stars Novel is currently in trial read. We'll see how things go if this novel gets picked. Story Development: 2 stars Lots of forced plot. The author writes lots of statements out of the blue and expects the reader to believe them without any logical reasoning. For example. "Is this a prank? Wasn't I drinking at a pub with my colleagues? Could it be that I was kidnapped? Something like that? Am I being hung on the cross by someone?" It feels extremely clumsy. These lines, which were presumably there to clue the reader in on the protagonist's situation, are completely out of place. In the previous paragraph, the protagonist says that he is in immense pain- yet somehow he could think clearly? The second line, "Could it be that I was kidnapped?" is a shining example of the author's shallow understanding of a person's thoughts. In such a situation, where you've suddenly been transported to another place completely alien and unalike to your own, the most logical thing to do would be to wait and see what's happening around you, not randomly ask if you've been kidnapped. "Am I being hung on a cross by someone?" Is even more absurd. Previously, it hasn't been mentioned at all whether the protagonist has been hung on a cross, and if so, such a statement would be redundant. But following this statement, the protagonist is very clearly described to have opened his eyes for the first time after being transported. If you could feel yourself being hanged, you would simply think, "am I being hung?" rather than specify what you're being hung on. These small details ruin immersion and show how little care the author's taken to put any logical thought or reasoning into the protagonist's mind and expressions. "No that's wrong. I'm already dead. I'm just a soul now." Possibly the one of the largest logic-leaps I've seen in any novel so far. Before this statement is made, nothing is mentioned about an afterlife, death, whatsoever. The protagonist knows nothing except the fact that he's nailed to a cross, and that there are two humanoid figures before him. Any sane person would not immediately assume they're dead, and that they're a soul out of the blue. Following this, he's suddenly given two options, two courses of action to take... by himself? He states he can only do these two things, on what basis? Even more absurd, is the fact that he decides that he can swallow souls, and without explanation, the author explains how the protagonist knows exactly how the ritual in front of him would proceed, and how the "soul exchange balance scales" work. Additional point. The author has essentially given the protagonist a system. He refuses to admit this, and doesn't make any attempt to provide a reason for such, nor does he try and clock said system in mystery. Even the protagonist himself does not question randomly being given "information fragments" when it's convenient. If the author were to include this system which tells the protagonist his status, and bits of fact/information of whatever he's looking at, at least use this to cover up those jumps in logic previously mentioned? So, as far as development goes, the lack of logic completely ruins the momentum and mystery that the author has attempted to build up. Character Design: 3 stars The protagonist, from his bearing, is supposed to be a relatively smart and borderline cunning individual. Not so. His illogical thoughts make him seem like someone attempting to act composed, and the author definitely attempts to portray him in this way, but the aforementioned beg to differ. The protagonist is reincarnated into the body of someone who is very conveniently named the same as his previous body, Tang Qi. Pure laziness. I saw someone mention this in chapter/paragraph comments, and someone refuting the author's laziness by saying, "there's no point in a throwaway name". This much is true, but I'd rather have a throwaway name than this forced plot convenience. If this original name and personal background was as important or relevant as it is in a similar novel, Lord of the Mysteries, which it very clearly isn't, shame on the author. Think what you will, but these minor details are extremely disappointing. World Background: 1 star From what I've seen so far, the author intends to take our current reality and edit small parts to his liking, such as renaming them, before throwing them out onto a flat landmass and patting himself on the back. The area the protagonist ends up in after chapter 1 seems to be based off of Europe, as the name "Moses City" would suggest. Moses being a name exclusive to Christianity, which is very prominent in Europe and some parts of Asia, but completely nonexistent in China, as the protagonist's name clearly originates from. This, combined with the problems explained in Character Description bring the world background to 1 star. And combined with the very bland introduction of info-dumping things onto the reader on chapter 3 justify this rating. If this world's background had even a slight resemblance to the depth Cuttlefish put into Lord of the Mysteries, it would not have such a bad rating. Unfortunately, the author's individually small but very plentiful overlooked details build up for an overall average rating. The only reason this novel did not score less than average would be the free 5 star on update stability, and translation quality. Content-wise, 2 stars. (And if you were planning on writing some sort of rebuke to this review, please, please, please avoid saying things like, "but there are so many other half-assed novels that have been translated, and this is better than them." Yes, whilst there are several subpar novels out there, this is an individual review focusing solely on this novel. References and comparisons to LotM only serve as convenience to show how marvellously well Truly Foolish Elder ruined a concept full of potential.) After Notes. If you read the entirety of this novel, thank you for respecting the time I put into writing this. I tried my utmost to convey my disappointment in finding a novel very similar to LotM, only to have my hopes dashed upon the cliff we call reality upon actually reading it. As you can already tell, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone to read. If you're a LotM fan looking for something to stave off the hunger, don't get your hopes up. If you have no clue what the **** LotM is, and don't plan on reading it, read at your own risk. Have a wonderful quarantine (unless you're already through the pandemic), and I'll see you never again.
Lord of Enigma
Truly Foolish Elder
Liked by 22 people
LIKEReplies10
ramp_seeker:Bro your review more long than the novel summary and its first page and i slept in between though.........
I don't think rating the story development based solely on the author explaining situations through the MCs dialogue is fair. Story development is also about how the plot develops and is pushed forward. I think it should be three stars and above if you're looking at how the plot progresses and how the author links things to make the plot progress and not how the author uses dialogue to shed some light on situations and how some lines don't fit into what would happen in that situation. DON'T READ AHEAD IF YOU'VE NOT READ THE STORY. BECAUSE THIS IS BASICALLY ALL THE 60 CHAPTERS AVAILABLE SUMMED UP. The plot progresses kinda well. We start out with him as a demon and he tricks his way into getting a human body and having someone else replac him as a demon. Then he goes to the Holy Thorns High School to avoid the family of that guy he made replace him. He then meets Sally who is later shown to be inhabited by a fragment of the Witch of Misfortune from another 'plane of existence'. (how he meets her is so retarded that whole bullying thing and the social pyramid in the school) Then comes the case of the girls who were skinned alive and all the other creatures he meets. In that specific case it links/hints/ to three things later on: Him joining the Police, how being around Sally brings bad luck and can attract monsters for him to get stronger, when he gets the red crystal tear and it says that returning it will result in the gratitude of the Sea Monsters, It hints that further on in the story there's a possibility of him interacting with Sea Monsters. He meets the fragment of the Witch of Misfortune while taking Sally for a makeover to help her self confidence. She tries to sign a deal with him with the most retarded terms but he figures out a way to turn the situation around and benefit from it. He joins the Police as a consultant. He also hides his supernatural powers so that he seems unassuming and be under the radar and he can catch people unaware when he does show his powers. While everything is going on he also notices a conspiracy in two objects the map and the book of spells so he gives them to the Police instead of keeping them. Everything I've mentioned above somehow moves the plot forward or hints at stuff that's going on in the background and will be relevant to the plot in the future...
"I don't think rating the story development based solely on the author explaining situations through the MCs dialogue is fair." This is a completely true statement, however, there are a few things I'd like you to take into account. 1) I did not rate the story development solely on the author's explanations 2) I did criticise the author's execution of the plot, and I think it is fair and justifiable, since those matters were directly associated and linked to the progression of the story What I did do, was point out leaps in logic. Now, usually, the leaps in logic would be classified as the author's explanation of the protagonist's situation, which, might I add, is still a bad mark in anyone's book, but in this case, not so. This is because some (admittedly, not all) of the author's logic leaps are vital to the progression of the story. This means the author's bad execution directly affects the rating of the story's development, since the way it was developed was clumsy, and the story wouldn't have progressed as "smoothly", if you can call it that, without said leaps in logic. For example... "he's suddenly given two options, two courses of action to take... by himself?" (a quote from my own review) It makes sense that the author made the protagonist think up two courses of action in order to progress the story. This is the author's method of drawing the reader's attention to the dilemma at hand, and the protagonist's focus. I believe this would completely count as story development. Since the author didn't write anything else in order to make the protagonist take action, would this not count as story development? And as I've previously stated, those two courses of action in themselves were completely out of place, and, dare I say it, bulls.h.i.t. Now, I would add more, but for the sake of a swift response, I'll end it there.
Kedledoeimange:I don't think rating the story development based solely on the author explaining situations through the MCs dialogue is fair. Story development is also about how the plot develops and is pushed forward. I think it should be three stars and above if you're looking at how the plot progresses and how the author links things to make the plot progress and not how the author uses dialogue to shed some light on situations and how some lines don't fit into what would happen in that situation. DON'T READ AHEAD IF YOU'VE NOT READ THE STORY. BECAUSE THIS IS BASICALLY ALL THE 60 CHAPTERS AVAILABLE SUMMED UP. The plot progresses kinda well. We start out with him as a demon and he tricks his way into getting a human body and having someone else replac him as a demon. Then he goes to the Holy Thorns High School to avoid the family of that guy he made replace him. He then meets Sally who is later shown to be inhabited by a fragment of the Witch of Misfortune from another 'plane of existence'. (how he meets her is so retarded that whole bullying thing and the social pyramid in the school) Then comes the case of the girls who were skinned alive and all the other creatures he meets. In that specific case it links/hints/ to three things later on: Him joining the Police, how being around Sally brings bad luck and can attract monsters for him to get stronger, when he gets the red crystal tear and it says that returning it will result in the gratitude of the Sea Monsters, It hints that further on in the story there's a possibility of him interacting with Sea Monsters. He meets the fragment of the Witch of Misfortune while taking Sally for a makeover to help her self confidence. She tries to sign a deal with him with the most retarded terms but he figures out a way to turn the situation around and benefit from it. He joins the Police as a consultant. He also hides his supernatural powers so that he seems unassuming and be under the radar and he can catch people unaware when he does show his powers. While everything is going on he also notices a conspiracy in two objects the map and the book of spells so he gives them to the Police instead of keeping them. Everything I've mentioned above somehow moves the plot forward or hints at stuff that's going on in the background and will be relevant to the plot in the future...
This is one wall of text. Well I read most of it and scimed part of it. I am not usually mystery lover so please keep that in mind when you read next part. I have tried to read Lord of the Mysteries. If I remember it right then I droped it in some 100+ chapters and actually forgot why. Probably just lost interest as I dont remember any big feelings. Now this novel start is kinda pumpy. The wey mc ends up in the world and spends his first 2 days is kinda forsed. But... out of curiosity I went to machine translation of the novel. Now I actually have read almost 400 chapters without skiping anything. The blody novel had leached on me. So to sum it up - it gets better and better after each ark. The world building starts to make sense (its not copy paste of our world) and mc actually starts to feel like smart one. There is no system or system quests. What mc has is aprisal skill that works on supernatural stuff and it is very helpful.
You should definitely pick LotM back up then. It builds up similarly to how you've described this one, but the way it's done is near flawless and there's certainly no bumpy start. The only major flaw, depending on how long your attention span is, would be the slow pacing. In regards to Lord of Enigma (yuck), as you've stated the fact that you've skimmed my review, the reason why I don't like it is precisely because of the bumpy start and forced occurrences. Additionally, I noted how it missed out a few opportunities at the start due to ?the author wanting his novel to be different compared to LotM? But even so, there are some unique choices the author could have made to separate his novel from the pack, which he didn't make. Now, regarding why the bumpy start is such a turn-off for me. This genre of novel is mystery. Perhaps a bit of horror mixed in there. This means the entire goal of the author is to immerse the reader in an alien world, where danger is around every corner and looming behind your back. This is also why a build-up is important- so that you have a satisfying and intense climax. LoE fails to do this because its build-ups are far from adequate, and mystifying logic ruins the sense of wonder and immersion. Finally, your note about reading MTL. Let's be real here. Reading MTL can't be used to support a novel. An author's mistakes are concealed by puzzling machine-translated words and phrases. I feel like lots of mistakes would actually be covered up by bad translation, and subsequently blamed on MTL itself. And anyone, and everyone can sit through 400 chapters of "I give you colour see-see". It's not challenging, difficult, and certainly doesn't say anything about the author's story, other than the fact that it might be worth reading- which we've clearly established isn't, for the vast majority of us. Extra note. The so called "appraisal" skill is clearly just a system. It's presented and written in such a way. P̶e̶r̶h̶a̶p̶s̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶g̶r̶a̶m̶m̶a̶r̶.̶
Kerail:This is one wall of text. Well I read most of it and scimed part of it. I am not usually mystery lover so please keep that in mind when you read next part. I have tried to read Lord of the Mysteries. If I remember it right then I droped it in some 100+ chapters and actually forgot why. Probably just lost interest as I dont remember any big feelings. Now this novel start is kinda pumpy. The wey mc ends up in the world and spends his first 2 days is kinda forsed. But... out of curiosity I went to machine translation of the novel. Now I actually have read almost 400 chapters without skiping anything. The blody novel had leached on me. So to sum it up - it gets better and better after each ark. The world building starts to make sense (its not copy paste of our world) and mc actually starts to feel like smart one. There is no system or system quests. What mc has is aprisal skill that works on supernatural stuff and it is very helpful.
Well the main point here is that you are true mystery fan and also like horror. For me as soon as I see tag horror its off the list. Also I mostly do not read mystery. So maby this book is failed mystery book that ended up as fantasy/adventure? About grammar - english is not my native language + typing in mobile app + not really bothered about it as I this is free time typing not my work. But I think its still better than mtl🙃 especially if I mtl my native language to english that result honestly -😂
Jezzekiel:You should definitely pick LotM back up then. It builds up similarly to how you've described this one, but the way it's done is near flawless and there's certainly no bumpy start. The only major flaw, depending on how long your attention span is, would be the slow pacing. In regards to Lord of Enigma (yuck), as you've stated the fact that you've skimmed my review, the reason why I don't like it is precisely because of the bumpy start and forced occurrences. Additionally, I noted how it missed out a few opportunities at the start due to ?the author wanting his novel to be different compared to LotM? But even so, there are some unique choices the author could have made to separate his novel from the pack, which he didn't make. Now, regarding why the bumpy start is such a turn-off for me. This genre of novel is mystery. Perhaps a bit of horror mixed in there. This means the entire goal of the author is to immerse the reader in an alien world, where danger is around every corner and looming behind your back. This is also why a build-up is important- so that you have a satisfying and intense climax. LoE fails to do this because its build-ups are far from adequate, and mystifying logic ruins the sense of wonder and immersion. Finally, your note about reading MTL. Let's be real here. Reading MTL can't be used to support a novel. An author's mistakes are concealed by puzzling machine-translated words and phrases. I feel like lots of mistakes would actually be covered up by bad translation, and subsequently blamed on MTL itself. And anyone, and everyone can sit through 400 chapters of "I give you colour see-see". It's not challenging, difficult, and certainly doesn't say anything about the author's story, other than the fact that it might be worth reading- which we've clearly established isn't, for the vast majority of us. Extra note. The so called "appraisal" skill is clearly just a system. It's presented and written in such a way. P̶e̶r̶h̶a̶p̶s̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶g̶r̶a̶m̶m̶a̶r̶.̶
Kerail:Well the main point here is that you are true mystery fan and also like horror. For me as soon as I see tag horror its off the list. Also I mostly do not read mystery. So maby this book is failed mystery book that ended up as fantasy/adventure? About grammar - english is not my native language + typing in mobile app + not really bothered about it as I this is free time typing not my work. But I think its still better than mtl🙃 especially if I mtl my native language to english that result honestly -😂
Kerail:This is one wall of text. Well I read most of it and scimed part of it. I am not usually mystery lover so please keep that in mind when you read next part. I have tried to read Lord of the Mysteries. If I remember it right then I droped it in some 100+ chapters and actually forgot why. Probably just lost interest as I dont remember any big feelings. Now this novel start is kinda pumpy. The wey mc ends up in the world and spends his first 2 days is kinda forsed. But... out of curiosity I went to machine translation of the novel. Now I actually have read almost 400 chapters without skiping anything. The blody novel had leached on me. So to sum it up - it gets better and better after each ark. The world building starts to make sense (its not copy paste of our world) and mc actually starts to feel like smart one. There is no system or system quests. What mc has is aprisal skill that works on supernatural stuff and it is very helpful.