Okay. So. I wanted to set a few things straight from a few conflicting reviews.
1. While the MC does get beaten to a pulp, and often, he does not always “lose”. He is dealt a crap hand in life and has some terrible luck, but everything isn’t all bad. He first gets beat up roughly by a client, (He works as a personal trainer/practice dummy), but in return he gets a few nice drinks from his coworker and a little bump to his defenses. This isn’t exactly an huge boost, but their is an exchange. Next he gets the absolute **** kicked out of him by some bratty rich kids, but he gets healed by a nice client and gets to keep a large bonus. You see the pattern?
2. There is a give and take relationship in this book. Nothing is free, and everything has strings attached. If he gets beat up, he gets a break. If he gets a break, something bad is usually around the corner. Everything has strings attached to it. This advances the plot from point to point rather nicely.
3. I have read reviews that this book is depressing because the MC keeps getting continually beaten and “nothing good happens”. This is FALSE! There are some undeniably good and heartwarming moments in this book. Especially surrounding the MC’s sister. Their relationship is an emotional rollercoaster, and I am glad she actually has character and a sense of humor rather than just being a two-dimensional motivation tool for our MC.
4. While I did enjoy the author’s “Changing Faces” book a lot better, this book can’t be compared. This book is cultivation while that one is definitely a LITRPG. The writing style, prose, characters, and entire genre is different. IF I didn’t know better I would say this was written by entirely different person because of how different it feels and flows. This isn’t a bad thing though. On the other hand, it is quite extraordinary.
5. Just as reference, other cultivation books have MC’s who go through a lot more shit than our MC here. For example the characters from “Buryoku” by Aaron Oster and “A Thousand Li” by Tao Wong go through some exceptionally brutal beat downs. Even in Will Wight’s “Cradle” series, the MC never gets a break and is thrust into new problems as soon as he finishes the last. At least here, our MC has days of down time and semi-relaxation.
6. If I had to critique this book, the thing that irritates me the most are the speech patterns. For example, Granny continually uses “Dearie” every other sentence. The (bad) Uncle calls him “Boy”. His other crappy family members call him “Dick”. There are others, but each time they are said they are used as a slur to degrade him. This doesn’t bother me so much as how often they are used. Having to hear them said over and over is grating on my ears. It is not quite as bad as “Kitten” from the Undead Rogue series, but it is pretty damn close.
7. Travis Baldree does a fantastic job as always. All his voices are practically unique, He can go soft or loud, portray male, or female, young or old. His words carry emotion and there is forethought to his reading. It’s fantastic
Overall. It is a great book with a ton of character development. Don’t get hung up on his defeats because he always bounces back. I highly recommend you listen to this book for yourself. It is worth a credit. Give it a try and make your own opinion.