Review Detail of Daoistfi9kmI in Corruption Family

This story is unique as is the author's previous work. You will not find anything else on Webnovel quite like them. Something enjoyable but not mindless. Complex and interesting without being pretentious. Similar to their previous story, the author has chosen a dark, ruthless, urban, industrial steampunk fantasy setting as the perfect stage to leverage their outstanding skill at writing characters with concealed thoughts, motives, agendas and identities. This is further bolstered by focusing on a compact setting instead of the more expansive, open worlds of your typical magical realism novel. This title shows immense promise, even after just 15 chapters. The pacing allows all of the developments to be interesting and give numerous opportunities to for entertaining events in the future, but also gives room for the characters to breathe and interact. The character writing (the author's main strength) is bold and complex, but tasteful, with vivid but not excessive descriptions and consistent, believable characterisation. Even better is the way the author executes character interactions, where the difference between the characters' thoughts and external actions gives each scene more depth and intrigue. Additionally, the way the plot is developing implies that we will get some of the author's exquisite melodrama, showcasing the characters vivid emotions as well as their humanity, paying off the dominos setup by the author beforehand. Although I called the author's setting compact, this does not detract from their world building that incorporates enough politics, economics, science and culture inspired by their real and fantastical counterparts to give a sense of tangibility to the world, pulling the reader in wanting to know more about it. The author describes part of their setting in visceral detail to give the reader a vivid image to spur their imagination and increase their engrossment in the story. To address the major turnoffs to potential readers there are two: The taboo and R18 subject matter and the main character. Firstly, if potential readers are concerned, triggered, or turned off by upsetting or risqué material or subject matter then I completely understand and support their choice to look elsewhere as this book is not looking to pull punches. For readers who are okay with stories containing these topics, I honestly believe that this story has used the setting so far to serve and enhance the narrative (such as with the 'A series' ) and trust that it will continue to do so. Your decision regarding the same is yours alone and may be different from mine. Secondly, I will say upfront that I am happy with the author's choice to restrict the amount of R18, smutty descriptions in the story and would prefer it to stay that way, as it has yet to majorly serve the narrative. I would honestly prefer for the story to continue to lean towards it's current direction in this regard but understand if potential readers would prefer to steer clear for this reason. Lastly, the main character is accurately characterised as a lazy, unintelligent, immature, deceitful, lecherous university student. The biggest defence I will pose is his narrative usefulness in enacting change ( by making different decisions to the original host) and in maintaining tension throughout the story (at least so far). Hopefully he will have some development to make him a bit more competent and less frustrating without breaking his character (some combat/ espionage training ?). That will be all 5/5 stars.