Full disclosure: I work with the translator, Jeremy Bai, on another of his translation projects currently on wuxiaworld.com
Years ago, as an avid fan of LitRPG, I'd read practically every book in the entire then-tiny genre. Back then, it hadn't yet grown into the relative behemoth of a subgenre that it is today, so the selection (especially on Kindle Unlimited) was rather slim. Then I discovered the Bushido Online trilogy, and later befriended its author, Nikita Thorn. She and I were discussing books we liked to read as we were growing up, and she introduced me to the wuxia genre. Which, if anything, was even *smaller* on Amazon, albeit better-curated than it is today (there are entirely too many machine translated wuxia, xianxia, and xuanhuan novels currently flooding Amazon, but that's a rant for another time).
So in my curiosity, I started looking for wuxia and xianxia novels on Amazon, and happened to come across the Coiling Dragon series, written by Wo Chi Xi Hong Shi (I Eat Tomatoes) and translated by the excellent Ren Woxing, who is also my boss over at wuxiaworld.com. (I promise I'm not skewing my review by complimenting his stellar translation and his editor's amazing editing, nor am I sucking up to them; it's a really good read). I discovered an entirely new passion for me to turn my thousand-plus-words-per-minute reading habit onto, as the whole webnovel genre tends to book series that run into the millions of words and thousands of chapters.
I was immediately hooked. Having devoured the entire eight-book Coiling Dragon Saga in the course of a single weekend of binge reading, I took my bloodshot eyes and under-eye baggage straight back to Amazon in search of more. I had to have MORE!
... But sadly, there was no more to be found. So I branched my search out to the internet and discovered Wuxia World, where I could satisfy my newly-acquired hunger for all things wuxia and wuxia-adjacent (such as xianxia and xuanhuan, which I can now tell the difference between, having been a genre superfan for the last few years). And lo! There on that website, I discovered the I Shall Seal the Heavens webnovel for my binge-reading pleasure.
I was immediately captivated by it as I began reading the story of Meng Hao, a failed scholar who was kidnapped by a passing immortal cultivator through a weird coincidence. I still fondly recall nearly every plot beat of its 1600+ chapter journey, from a young Meng Hao just starting out to the (spoiler, but not really a spoiler) all-powerful being he eventually becomes, and all of the relationships, ups and downs, comedies, and tragedies he experiences along the way.
The writing, pacing, characters, and storytelling is, as I later discovered, a far stretch above the norm in a genre where exhausted authors are paid by the word to churn out as much content as they can as fast as they can in a somewhat shotgun approach to earning profits from paying readers. I Shall Seal the Heavens stands leagues above the dross in the xianxia webnovel genre, and it could be favorably compared to most of the traditionally-published Western fantasy fare that I grew up on. It definitely doesn't hurt that Deathblade (the translator's online nom de plume) is an exceptionally stellar translator with a solid grasp of both Chinese and American cultural quirks and an ability to mesh the two together into one coherent whole, which leads to a translation that's both familiar and comfortably unfamiliar to a reader brought up primarily on Western fare. The care he takes with his translating is another factor in why ISSTH (I Shall Seal the Heavens) is one of my favorite novels of all time, let alone webnovels.
So for the series as a whole, I can't recommend it highly enough. While Coiling Dragon was also amazing, and got me hooked on the genre as surely as a drug dealer promising that "the first taste is free", ISSTH is the novel that sealed my addiction through its superb storytelling, plotting, pacing, characters, and translation and editing quality.
Now for the split book that I'm reviewing here.
Patriarch Reliance is the first of probably fifteen or sixteen books in the series, given that WW (Wuxiaworld) tries to cut each novel at about a hundred chapters, give or take. It tells the story of Meng Hao, a failed scholar who was abandoned by his family and on his last legs, having taken (and failed) the scholars' exam for a third time. As he wanders up a mountain and ponders the future of his life - in what he considers unsurmountable debt and with no future prospects - he is snatched up by a passing immortal cultivator and thrown into an entirely new world where the law of the jungle is the only law that matters.
Only by growing stronger will he overcome the challenges he's presented with along his journey from that point on.
Once in the Reliance Sect, he has to overcome obstacle after obstacle, relying on his wits, stubbornness, and a little bit of luck along the way as he breaks free from his mortal life and begins his immortal journey.
I don't give 5/5 ratings often, and I give reviews even less so. This is one book that I just can't praise highly enough - if you have Kindle Unlimited, there's absolutely nothing to lose by trying it out. But you also have everything to gain, as I did when I first read it on a translation website years ago, and now again as it's finally shown up on Amazon.
And even if you don't have Kindle Unlimited, the book is currently priced at only $4.99. A mere five bucks isn't much to ask, even in today's economy, for everything this book has to offer.
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Top reviews from other countries
James
A great series that got me hooked on the Xianxia Genre
Reviewed in Canada on October 31, 2021
