Book Review: Unsouled, by Will Wight
Some sort of an anime/Wuxia/RPG mishmash with space gods.
Hidden Gnome Publishing, 2016, 294 pages
Sacred artists follow a thousand Paths to power, using their souls to control the forces of the natural world.
Lindon is Unsouled, forbidden to learn the sacred arts of his clan.
When faced with a looming fate he cannot ignore, he must rise beyond anything he's ever known...and forge his own Path.
The Cradle series by Will Wight is up to ten books now, and it's acquired quite a fandom. It's part of a "new" genre called "progression fantasy," which is basically about the main character getting steadily more powerful, leveling up and facing ever-greater Big Bads. Pure power fantasy wish-fulfillment, and very appealing to RPG grinders.
It's brain candy, but I was not terribly impressed and I am not sure I will continue the series, even though I got the first three books for free.
In Unsouled, we are introduced to Wei Shi Lindon, an "Unsouled" member of the Wei Clan of the Sacred Valley. Everyone in the Sacred Valley has a Path, determined at a young age by a Hogwarts-like sorting ceremony (minus the singing hat). Lindon "failed" the test and was declared "Unsouled," meaning essentially that he was considered to have no magic. He's spent his entire childhood being treated like shit, even by his family, who protect him but still consider him to be basically a useless cripple. Ambitious and determined, he dreams of somehow learning how to use "Madra" (the magical force) to become a Sacred Artist despite everyone telling him it's impossible.
So the basic premise is very familiar: a weak, powerless protagonist wants to prove himself, and rises above the fate proscribed for him.
The magic is somewhat reminiscent of Brandon Sanderson, with meticulously categorized, itemized Paths and Techniques. Sacred Artists start at Copper and eventually transform to Iron, with some of the Valley's elders reaching the elite state of Jade. There is a legendary Gold level which no one in the Valley has reached. There is a lot of talk about "Madra" (mana, or as I found myself frequently thinking, "power points"), and one of Lindon's Sanderson-like qualities is thinking analytically about the powers and techniques he encounters and figuring out how he can use his own meager abilities to fight them. Lindon's world is full of magical beings, magical trees, magical fruits that will instantly level you up if you eat them, and "Remnants" which are basically the ghosts of dead things and people, which can be more powerful and dangerous than the being was when alive.
This standard power fantasy (Lindon stumbles upon a way to gain some power, ends up competing in a clan competition and taking on opponents he shouldn't possibly be able to defeat) is interrupted by the sudden arrival of time-bending space gods.
The interludes with Suriel and other Abidan (some sort of cosmic Green Lantern force who keep other Big Bads from messing with the universe) did not really awe me with the sense of scale, but annoyed me with genre dissonance. Lindon's story is a very Wuxia/AtLA fantasy hero quest. But we learn that Lindon's world is being watched by space gods who can literally rewind time, and there is a "Dreadgod" coming who's destined to destroy the Sacred Valley, and Suriel (an angelic Abidan) tells Lindon he has some tiny chance of preventing it. So now Lindon has to not just overcome the petty clan rivalries and personal challenges of the Sacred Valley, but become an epic world-saving hero. Which is cool, except it felt like basically Lindon and all the people on his world are now literally characters in a game. We've already seen that the fabled Gold level Sacred Artists are in fact small fry compared to what else is out there. Will Lindon eventually rise to become a space god himself? Dunno, not sure if I care.
The rest of the book continues Lindon's hero quest. He goes off to be trained by another clan, all the while plotting to get out of the Sacred Valley. The elders believe the Sacred Valley is the only habitable place in the world and everything beyond is wild and full of monsters, but Lindon has already been shown by Suriel that there are whole empires out there. Lindon is an interesting protagonist in that he's not entirely a nice person, but the Sacred Valley is full of hyper-competitive status-seeking assholes. Lindon has no compunctions about cheating and using trickery since he (rightly) realizes that his teachers view him as an expendable tool. He ends up teaming up with a sword-slinging murderhobo who came from outside the valley with her master and has been carving up Sacred Artists who keep trying to kill her, and the two of them embark on a heist to steal a bunch of artifacts, defeat a Big Bad, and escape the Sacred Valley.
Unsouled ends with more hints at the big cosmic battle going on in the greater universe.
I can see how the Cradle series would be some folks' jam. I've compared it to Brandon Sanderson and AtLA, but it also reminded me a bit of E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series. Mortal heroes find themselves drawn into a cosmic battle between ultra-powerful space gods, and level up to become godlike themselves.
But I wasn't really impressed by the writing, which is very fanfiction-quality, or the dialog (particularly clunky in the interactions between Lindon and Yerin, Lindon's murder-bunny ally at the end of the book). The magic/character-build system frequently descends to LitRPG "stats ticking upward on the page."
It's a series meant to be binged, but I felt it was similar to trying to read Worm: everyone else loves it, and for me it just went episodically on and on.
My complete list of book reviews.
Hidden Gnome Publishing, 2016, 294 pages
Sacred artists follow a thousand Paths to power, using their souls to control the forces of the natural world.
Lindon is Unsouled, forbidden to learn the sacred arts of his clan.
When faced with a looming fate he cannot ignore, he must rise beyond anything he's ever known...and forge his own Path.
The Cradle series by Will Wight is up to ten books now, and it's acquired quite a fandom. It's part of a "new" genre called "progression fantasy," which is basically about the main character getting steadily more powerful, leveling up and facing ever-greater Big Bads. Pure power fantasy wish-fulfillment, and very appealing to RPG grinders.
It's brain candy, but I was not terribly impressed and I am not sure I will continue the series, even though I got the first three books for free.
In Unsouled, we are introduced to Wei Shi Lindon, an "Unsouled" member of the Wei Clan of the Sacred Valley. Everyone in the Sacred Valley has a Path, determined at a young age by a Hogwarts-like sorting ceremony (minus the singing hat). Lindon "failed" the test and was declared "Unsouled," meaning essentially that he was considered to have no magic. He's spent his entire childhood being treated like shit, even by his family, who protect him but still consider him to be basically a useless cripple. Ambitious and determined, he dreams of somehow learning how to use "Madra" (the magical force) to become a Sacred Artist despite everyone telling him it's impossible.
So the basic premise is very familiar: a weak, powerless protagonist wants to prove himself, and rises above the fate proscribed for him.
The magic is somewhat reminiscent of Brandon Sanderson, with meticulously categorized, itemized Paths and Techniques. Sacred Artists start at Copper and eventually transform to Iron, with some of the Valley's elders reaching the elite state of Jade. There is a legendary Gold level which no one in the Valley has reached. There is a lot of talk about "Madra" (mana, or as I found myself frequently thinking, "power points"), and one of Lindon's Sanderson-like qualities is thinking analytically about the powers and techniques he encounters and figuring out how he can use his own meager abilities to fight them. Lindon's world is full of magical beings, magical trees, magical fruits that will instantly level you up if you eat them, and "Remnants" which are basically the ghosts of dead things and people, which can be more powerful and dangerous than the being was when alive.
This standard power fantasy (Lindon stumbles upon a way to gain some power, ends up competing in a clan competition and taking on opponents he shouldn't possibly be able to defeat) is interrupted by the sudden arrival of time-bending space gods.
The interludes with Suriel and other Abidan (some sort of cosmic Green Lantern force who keep other Big Bads from messing with the universe) did not really awe me with the sense of scale, but annoyed me with genre dissonance. Lindon's story is a very Wuxia/AtLA fantasy hero quest. But we learn that Lindon's world is being watched by space gods who can literally rewind time, and there is a "Dreadgod" coming who's destined to destroy the Sacred Valley, and Suriel (an angelic Abidan) tells Lindon he has some tiny chance of preventing it. So now Lindon has to not just overcome the petty clan rivalries and personal challenges of the Sacred Valley, but become an epic world-saving hero. Which is cool, except it felt like basically Lindon and all the people on his world are now literally characters in a game. We've already seen that the fabled Gold level Sacred Artists are in fact small fry compared to what else is out there. Will Lindon eventually rise to become a space god himself? Dunno, not sure if I care.
The rest of the book continues Lindon's hero quest. He goes off to be trained by another clan, all the while plotting to get out of the Sacred Valley. The elders believe the Sacred Valley is the only habitable place in the world and everything beyond is wild and full of monsters, but Lindon has already been shown by Suriel that there are whole empires out there. Lindon is an interesting protagonist in that he's not entirely a nice person, but the Sacred Valley is full of hyper-competitive status-seeking assholes. Lindon has no compunctions about cheating and using trickery since he (rightly) realizes that his teachers view him as an expendable tool. He ends up teaming up with a sword-slinging murderhobo who came from outside the valley with her master and has been carving up Sacred Artists who keep trying to kill her, and the two of them embark on a heist to steal a bunch of artifacts, defeat a Big Bad, and escape the Sacred Valley.
Unsouled ends with more hints at the big cosmic battle going on in the greater universe.
I can see how the Cradle series would be some folks' jam. I've compared it to Brandon Sanderson and AtLA, but it also reminded me a bit of E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series. Mortal heroes find themselves drawn into a cosmic battle between ultra-powerful space gods, and level up to become godlike themselves.
But I wasn't really impressed by the writing, which is very fanfiction-quality, or the dialog (particularly clunky in the interactions between Lindon and Yerin, Lindon's murder-bunny ally at the end of the book). The magic/character-build system frequently descends to LitRPG "stats ticking upward on the page."
It's a series meant to be binged, but I felt it was similar to trying to read Worm: everyone else loves it, and for me it just went episodically on and on.
My complete list of book reviews.