Two thumbs up for Mo Dao Zu Shi (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) by Mo Xiang Tongxiu. Fantasy.
This review contains spoilers, but you’ll thank me. Context first: my roommate and I watched The Untamed on Netflix over the course of something like five days. It’s 50 hour-long episodes – my eyes stopped being able to focus and I was learning Mandarin by osmosis by episode 40. (Synopsis: Handsome and extremely charismatic boys fight demons, fall in love.) When we hit the rather ambiguous ending, we did what everyone else probably did, which was Googled how the book ends. Well. (Spoilers here.) Not only do the boys end up a happy couple, but the last twentyish percent of the original text is pornographic. I’m going to be honest, this is not as excellent as it might sound – not my kink, maybe not yours either, and can we tell the translator that the content warning goes before the content? That aside, I really did (slowly) read the whole 1,000-odd pages, even though it was translated into English by (I believe) a highschooler. Because it’s all just absurdly fun. If there was a 1,000 page sequel available right now, I’d be reading it. (I’m omitting a sample paragraph here because the translation is really awkward and you’d wince.)
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