- #1
A great light read if you are a big fan of Enemies to Lovers (lot's and lot's of violent interactions and tension) and powerful MC.Plot so far (novel description is misleading) :MC (Jiang Luo) transmigrates into body of villain who killed the ML (original novel's protagonist) and has to come up with a way to survive the ML's revenge. His solution: find a way to annoy the heck out of ML/ make him find him "interesting" so that ML is tempted to take revenge more slowly (i.e., play a cat and mouse game with him) instead of killing him outright straight away. Setting is horror/ghosts NOT fluff with doting ML.Great things about the novel:
- Powerful and crazy MC - comes up with crazy, shameless and fearless ways to provoke the heck outta ML and fight back
- Fast paced novel - consistently delivers great chapters and you don't have to wait forever to meet ML - they have great violent interactions at least every second chapter if not every chapter
- Not bad horror/ ghost setting - interesting enough to keep the plot going
- Repetitive plotline (so far Chap 54) - i.e., MC goes ghost hunting, encounters ML who is stalking him for revenge, then outsmarts him and runs away
- I personally enjoyed it, and it's not like there's no consequence for each encounter (usually MC/ML powers up or ML falls even deeper, etc) but if you don't enjoy this dynamic or prefer deeper character/plot development, may not be for you
- Inconsistencies in character/ other characters IQ levels
- MC pretending to be a hopeless romantic and then being super strong and arrogant the next moment is a bit of a jarring gap in character you would think for the other characters to experience
- You might question why the other characters are so conveniently dumb in not being able to expose MC for the above and other inconsistencies (the novel provides some explanations for why, but, if you are fixated on having completely logical and realistic explanations, it may bother you)
- Repetitive plotline (so far Chap 54) - i.e., MC goes ghost hunting, encounters ML who is stalking him for revenge, then outsmarts him and runs away
- MC is too Mary Sue/OP.
- Power wise? Yeah he is pretty OP, is innately talented and sometimes his knowledge/ability to analyse evil spirits/etc doesn't make sense (especially when he just transmigrated and hadn't gone to the metaphysical school yet). It didn't bother me too much though - his powers were pretty cool and his analysis of ghosts were pretty interesting. There is still a decent power gap between him and originally OP characters and most of the time he wins by cunningness, not brute power/strength.
- Charisma/ability to attract friends/ other love interests? This doesn't really count as being too Mary Sue.Most friendships aren't too unreasonable - his first few friends are impressed by his power/ability and when your dealing with super scary ghosts - who wouldn't want a big thigh to hold? Others are explained by prior relationships - don't want ML to lose his way and kill 'innocent' MC or wanting to grow and nuture the family talent. As for romantic interests - so far only one other character has a vague crush - and this makes sense - MC is very talented and very attractive.
- Why doesn't MC just reveal that his soul just got switched when stuff like possessions exist in this setting?
- To other characters: Well exactly because evil spirits can possess humans, he can't reveal otherwise they would probably treat him as an evil spirit and kill him
- To ML: Possibly could have worked at the start of the story but with low chance of success (MC's plan was much more successful and he chose it because he understood the ML's character well). After the first couple of chapters, there is no way it would help. The feud is no longer between ML and the original villain anymore, they both kill each other a number of times, and its not just ML who wants to kill MC, MC wants to kill ML now.
- It also just doesn't fit MC's style/character
- The MC not being exposed is a bit weird though. I guess not having his soul switch be exposed can be explained by the fact that the og character didn't have friends and they end up doing tests to make sure he is not possessed (for other reasons)
- ML could have killed MC way earlier, but keeps letting him go
- I don't get why this is a surprise. This is exactly what MC's plan was from Chapter 1. Make himself interesting enough so that ML doesn't want to kill him (kind of like a Batman and Joker dynamic). Also ML is slowly but surely becoming attracted to MC (despite his ongoing thirst for payback) so it makes even more sense that eventually he wouldn't want to kill ML at all. I'm only on chapter 54 though so we'll see how it goes.
- MC is too Mary Sue/OP.
