Mediocre, a nice standard for 'average' to compare others with. It's nice that it's completed already and we don't have to wait week after week, but for the style it's in, there are lots of other novels on this site that does the job better (and lots that do it worse). The nice things about it are the occasional warm scenes and amusing characters. Although rare, the feeling of family and friends are well-appreciated. But the idiocy! The sheer, mind-blowing, soul-cringing idiocy! It's like almost all the characters in this story, even the supposedly 'intelligent' ones are competing for the Global Morons Championships! What kind of husband sits around crying about his mistakes while his wife is lying in front of him still alive but slowly dying? SAVE HER you absolute nincompoop! And all that standing around waiting for an enemy to strike first! Or worse, give them time to summon a total badass?! Or treating a death-zone as a tourism site and getting trapped!? Or worse, the gambling habits! It's like a guy, who, just after becoming a majority shareholder in a global corporation, went to a casino and bet his very life all night long! That dumb! On top of that, the whole mindset of 'might makes right' looks like a child's temper tantrum. So many times I hoped for intelligent responses and all we got was more and more reason for endless conflicts. That, and a lot of contradictions of behavior and supposed character. The westernized names, the hate for churches and all that portraying gods behaving as badly as petty spiteful children doesn't help either. What happened to the author? Got rejected by a churchy girl who wanted to save herself for marriage? Sure seems like it. The story might have done better to delve more into meaningful side-plots (like a certain sort-of-teacher involving gravity and her spunky son, or a certain sister of a city lord who could have been a love interest, or even that certain pair of lovers stuck in a really bad place for a crazy amount of time). But instead? We get more reasons for a fight scene (which while plentiful, are too focused on reasons for power than actual action. Dude. Rookie mistake. Too much telling, not enough showing.) In the end, this story feels immature, like the early works of a budding novelist. It's a good first effort, I guess? Like I said, a good standard 'average' to compare others with.
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LIKEYou probably didn't get passed book 5 then. This author is really sucky at setting up stories, or starting them. But once you go far enough you start seeing all the pieces falling together. Sincerely once I finished reading the last chapter on the second series (stellar transformations) with tears in my eyes I just froze and didn't move for about an hour.
Major necro here but if you do see this, excuse me? What kind of cultivation novels have you read? In my opinion this is by far probably the best one I’ve read. Every other cultivation or system novel literally makes me want to bang my head on the wall about how stupid they are. Coiling dragon has very little horrible tropes and cliches compared to others. What’s wrong with westernized names? Sure some of them are a bit weird but it’s a lot easier to remember them (in my opinion atleast). Also, while Linley is a ruthless person, he’s extremely sensitive to those who are close to them. He wasn’t exactly in the write state of mind to do anything immediately. How the hell is this average compared to other novels? Please if you know of some cultivation novels superior to this then tell me, because I haven’t seen any make this look average.
It's been a long time and I've read a lot more webnovels here since then, and I have to say, in the light of these other webnovels, I actually agree with what you wrote; a huge number of these are worse. Back when I wrote this, the novels I remember the most were the likes of the Legends of Condor Hero trilogy, Heavenly Jewel Change, the earlier chapters of Sovereign of Three Realms, Library of Heaven's Path and True Martial World. I've also read a whole lot of sci-fi and fantasy novels that are non-wuxia related, so yes, it's no stretch to say I was comparing Coiling Dragon to the likes of Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings and the Mars trilogy. At this point, having read many more wuxia novels, a lot of whom I can't even remember, I must agree that there are far worse cultivation systems, and after so many chinese names, I really don't mind western ones at this point. Comparatively speaking, there are also far worse main characters. I also appreciate that the writer kept to a steady theme and style, rather than having a lighthearted novel suddenly dip into serious darkness (like a certain dungeon supplier novel) or ending in a completely unsatisfying way (like a certain immortal mortal novel). Yet it neither wows me (like LCH, TMW, SoTR, or RtW) or has me laughing under the table (like LoHP). So, yes, between the extremes of better stuff and worse stuff around, Coiling Dragon sort of became the standard average for comparison.
LCH ? TMW ? SoTR ? And the rest,what's the full name.