Doomsday Stewed Salted Fish Chapter 45 Discussion

I MTLed this but also read the raws.

Firstly, I feel a little misled by the many good ratings this novel has and felt that I needed to leave this review to balance out all the positive ones that have neglected to mention some of the issues with this novel.

About the plot

It's about an MC from a cultivation world who in a tragic fate somehow is transported to a post apocalyptic world. She is pretty new to modern technology and common sense of the world as she tries to live quietly in a base and but finds herself involved with people that make it impossible for her to hide from the world and live in seclusion. This novel follows her journey to come out of her shell emotionally and to believe in herself as she has never done so before.

About the MC

Probably the most difficult character to read in the novel is the MC. The author writes little tidbits here and there that make me feel empathetic towards her past but at the same time the MC's general apathy for the world makes her a very difficult character to connect with. Probably I see a lot of my past self in her that I find the author's depiction of her lacking. Just because someone has high emotional walls does not mean they are emotionless. The author probably does not understand what it's like to feel constantly defensive against the world and ends up writing a wooden, cold and emotionless character rather than what is in reality someone who has been hurt by her family in the past, lived a very lonely life for a hundred years and doesn't believe in people or want to connect with people. There are ways to deliver this and still draw empathy from the reader. The author just writes a few lines of background and doesn't really go about showing or telling her emotional state making character development very action oriented with a few moments of "epiphany" which I find a bit heavy handed and happening too quickly without much build up at all. MC's interaction with ML is quite artificial and honestly their emotional development is not very believable. There's no reason for her to like ML and plenty of reasons for her to be defensive against him. Her change of heart seems a bit contrived.

About the ML

The ML is a very calculating person who bears a great responsibility to the base he supports. His emotions as of how far I've read have not been dealt with at all. Author does not really give much insight into his character. He calculates MC again and again to try to get her to give more of herself to his cause. It's really manipulative and yet he's decent enough to admit he did all that on purpose. I can't really see why he fell for her but I guess you can chalk it up to love is illogical for the both of them. Honestly the romance is barely lukewarm at this point. I don't feel any emotional depth whatsoever in their interactions.

About the world building

The author did not provide any such world building relying on reader's collective past understanding of apocalyptic novels and cultivation novels to give the world depth. I mean if I had never read any apocalyptic novels, how would I know what the heck crystal core in the head was? It was never defined at all. And or any of the cultivation powers and spiritual roots. How would a reader know about it without having read any? It's very shallow to almost none world building. Not even much to build up the so called radiation that happened 50 years ago and or what starting the apocalypse. It leaves the world feeling very devoid and lacks in a solidity to tether the story. It makes the world, the people, the base and the danger matter less because the world building was almost non existent.

Why I rate this novel only a 3

While I wouldn't say this novel is badly written, It really comes down to the fact that the author leads the plot by the nose with action after action without personality and or much character development, letting only a sparse few moments shine through the slog. There's not enough substance to any character encountered to make me as a reader care about anyone so that even tragedy when it happens has not much weight. The MC could have used a lot more personality and inner thoughts being shown. It's enough that she is cold and wooden to the world but it's not to say she is devoid of emotions on the inside. In the 45 chapters I've read, there are only a few paragraphs truly devoted to her inner thoughts and it's really not enough to convince me to empathize with her rather.

She uses her tragic past as a reason for her wish to live in seclusion but the crux of it is fear. Fear of the world around her, fear of the people who might hurt her or betray her. She's not had good relationships ever and doesn't know what it's like to have people she can trust. She feels inferior because she's been mediocre all her life and believes she's weak once again and uses the past as the reason that she should hide from the world until the world knocks on her door and she can no longer ignore it. She doesn't feel like she's like the people in this world, constantly calling them "Earthling" roughly translated in her mind. There are ways to write this that would have made her more human, than to make her seem like an emotionless robot just like those who criticized her for living at the base on the blood and sacrifice of others. The author did not make her likeable because they could not express her humanity.

I'm sure this novel will have an empowerment arc and all that but I'm so far in and I simply cannot tolerate the way the author writes. There's really so little emotion and care to any character at all honestly it's here are some people and stuff happens. This is simply not my cup of tea but with so many good ratings I assume other people found this novel good and maybe it gets a a lot better later but I'll be damned if I had to read 45 chapters of bland character writing with little to no world building.

TL:DR A very emotionally shallow novel with weak world building, a highly defensive MC, and a manipulative ML. There's enough ratings from others that I'm sure some of you will find this novel a good reading. It's just not for me.