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4.53 AVERAGE
4.53 AVERAGE
For non-book records, review text and ratings are hidden. Only mood, pace, and content warnings are visible.
For non-book records, review text and ratings are hidden. Only mood, pace, and content warnings are visible.
For non-book records, review text and ratings are hidden. Only mood, pace, and content warnings are visible.
For non-book records, review text and ratings are hidden. Only mood, pace, and content warnings are visible.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I can't bring myself to fully hate this bc I love The Untamed, but outside of the worldbuilding I really don't have any positives. when the book leans into Wuxian's necromancy and the horror element, it can be pretty cool. my biggest criticism of the show is the misogyny and I figured it would be worse in the novel - it was. even tho Yanli and Qing both die, they are so important in the show but they appear very minimally in the novel and are basically never acknowledged again after their deaths. every other moderately important woman in the show is also barely present in the novel. thank god their roles were expanded for the live action. also the narrative basically sorts the women into the categories of either "cruel bitch who gets violently murdered and deserved it" or "sweet well meaning woman who sacrifices herself for a man" so that's.......
WangXian is easily the best part of the show, and what I didn't expect is that it would unequivocally be the worst part of the novel - obviously the show had to comply with Chinese censorship and so it couldn't be as explicit as the novel was (altho even if this wasn't the case I'm pretty confident their sex scenes from the novel would have been removed anyway lol), but the words that immediately come to mind when thinking about live action WangXian are: tender, devoted, understanding. when I think about novel WangXian, all I can think about is Wuxian's near constant sexual harassment and Wangji assaulting him and the novel trying to gaslight me into thinking it's erotic.
this also reads as being written by someone who was really obsessed with m/m slash fiction and I feel like a lot of the characters are really underdeveloped and a lot of plot (at least for the flashback sequence) is rushed through. there are a lot of scenes in the novel that are practically identical in the show, but there is also so much that is expanded on with the Wen sect! like Wen Ruohan is so menacing (albeit kinda campy) in the show and he's only mentioned a couple times in the novel! also so many of my favorite scenes from the show aren't in the novel at all! the Gusu lantern scene, Wangji defending Wuxian from Wen Chao, Wangji and Wuxian meeting Lan An in the cave, multiple scenes of Wangji explicitly expressing concern for Wuxian bc his necromancy - hell, a lot of WangXian moments in the flashback portion of the show just fully do not exist in the novel. which is kind of needed as the foundation for Wangji to have spent over a decade searching for Wuxian. cause in the novel we don't get Wangji's perspective at all in the flashback portion to understand his internal dialogue about Wuxian.
also while I do have to admit that "cut sleeve" is a very funny euphemism for a slur, I hated how incessant the homophobia was. like it's constantly being used in a derogatory way towards Wuxian, and people are always insulted when the term is directed at someone they respect. the show completely removes this and just decides to make practically everyone queercoded. the fact that there are people who prefer the novel to the show is batshit insane to me, especially when they say the novel is better bc it's "gayer" like...... ok so you like fetishization?
idk I honestly expected to have more problems with the novel than I did with the show, but I just straight up did not have a good time reading this. it gets 1.5/5 bc The Untamed is a solid 4/5 for me and the show wouldn't exist w/o this source material so I have to give it some props.
EDIT: expanded some thoughts above and changed my 2.5/5 to a 1.5/5 the next day bc the more I think about it, the more I hate the novel. I don't trust MXTX at all - the misogyny in the show was potent and it was 5000x worse in the novel, plus the unneeded homophobia, plus whorephobia/scenes of explicit violence towards sex workers, plus assault being treated as hot or funny. if the show didn't exist there's no way I would have continued reading after the first kiss, and I'd probably hate Wangji if not for the ways he'd been slightly altered in the show.
I can't speak to the quality of the writing bc as some other reviewers have said, I don't read or speak Mandarin and read a fan translation, so I tried not to judge too harsh on specific words or if the scene felt a little stilted bc like, is it a problem of the fan translation or the actual original text? that being said it felt incredibly juvenile at times. why are Wuxian and Xichen talking about Wangji's feelings for him when they are literally being held captive byMeng Yao ???? Like so many scenes get interrupted by some corny nonsense to push the WangXian "romance" and it's clear that the story was written around finding ways to push them together, not that the "romance" was organically happening with the story. (and "romance" is in quotes like that bc again, I didn't get enough in the flashbacks to understand why Wangji would have such strong feelings for Wuxian. plus Wuxian's "love confession" in the final few chapters being "I wanted to sleep with you when we were teens"......... Wuxian is allowed to be horny but let's not act like lust = romance).
amyway whatever. I read this so I could do a video essay comparing the novel and the live action and once that is complete I never want to think about this novel again. stick with The Untamed, everything to do with the flashbacks is better fleshed out, any lore expanded on in the novel is pretty minimal, and there's no trivialization of assault or fetishization of dubious consent like in the novel.
WangXian is easily the best part of the show, and what I didn't expect is that it would unequivocally be the worst part of the novel - obviously the show had to comply with Chinese censorship and so it couldn't be as explicit as the novel was (altho even if this wasn't the case I'm pretty confident their sex scenes from the novel would have been removed anyway lol), but the words that immediately come to mind when thinking about live action WangXian are: tender, devoted, understanding. when I think about novel WangXian, all I can think about is Wuxian's near constant sexual harassment and Wangji assaulting him and the novel trying to gaslight me into thinking it's erotic.
this also reads as being written by someone who was really obsessed with m/m slash fiction and I feel like a lot of the characters are really underdeveloped and a lot of plot (at least for the flashback sequence) is rushed through. there are a lot of scenes in the novel that are practically identical in the show, but there is also so much that is expanded on with the Wen sect! like Wen Ruohan is so menacing (albeit kinda campy) in the show and he's only mentioned a couple times in the novel! also so many of my favorite scenes from the show aren't in the novel at all! the Gusu lantern scene, Wangji defending Wuxian from Wen Chao, Wangji and Wuxian meeting Lan An in the cave, multiple scenes of Wangji explicitly expressing concern for Wuxian bc his necromancy - hell, a lot of WangXian moments in the flashback portion of the show just fully do not exist in the novel. which is kind of needed as the foundation for Wangji to have spent over a decade searching for Wuxian. cause in the novel we don't get Wangji's perspective at all in the flashback portion to understand his internal dialogue about Wuxian.
also while I do have to admit that "cut sleeve" is a very funny euphemism for a slur, I hated how incessant the homophobia was. like it's constantly being used in a derogatory way towards Wuxian, and people are always insulted when the term is directed at someone they respect. the show completely removes this and just decides to make practically everyone queercoded. the fact that there are people who prefer the novel to the show is batshit insane to me, especially when they say the novel is better bc it's "gayer" like...... ok so you like fetishization?
idk I honestly expected to have more problems with the novel than I did with the show, but I just straight up did not have a good time reading this. it gets 1.5/5 bc The Untamed is a solid 4/5 for me and the show wouldn't exist w/o this source material so I have to give it some props.
EDIT: expanded some thoughts above and changed my 2.5/5 to a 1.5/5 the next day bc the more I think about it, the more I hate the novel. I don't trust MXTX at all - the misogyny in the show was potent and it was 5000x worse in the novel, plus the unneeded homophobia, plus whorephobia/scenes of explicit violence towards sex workers, plus assault being treated as hot or funny. if the show didn't exist there's no way I would have continued reading after the first kiss, and I'd probably hate Wangji if not for the ways he'd been slightly altered in the show.
I can't speak to the quality of the writing bc as some other reviewers have said, I don't read or speak Mandarin and read a fan translation, so I tried not to judge too harsh on specific words or if the scene felt a little stilted bc like, is it a problem of the fan translation or the actual original text? that being said it felt incredibly juvenile at times. why are Wuxian and Xichen talking about Wangji's feelings for him when they are literally being held captive by
amyway whatever. I read this so I could do a video essay comparing the novel and the live action and once that is complete I never want to think about this novel again. stick with The Untamed, everything to do with the flashbacks is better fleshed out, any lore expanded on in the novel is pretty minimal, and there's no trivialization of assault or fetishization of dubious consent like in the novel.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Homophobia, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Violence
Moderate: Body horror, Child death, Death, Genocide, Incest, Misogyny, Death of parent, War
Minor: Animal death
noncon/sexual assault treated as erotic 🤮
also can't find a tag for it but the anti sex worker sentiment in the novel is pretty strong
For non-book records, review text and ratings are hidden. Only mood, pace, and content warnings are visible.
adventurous
funny
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
Yes
It was kind of terrible but I had fun and the world building was better than it had any right to be.
For non-book records, review text and ratings are hidden. Only mood, pace, and content warnings are visible.
I am in no way articulate enough to describe how much I love this story, these characters, and their dynamics but it is A LOT. Wangxian's in my brain 24/7 and I ain't complaining.