"Enough with This Slow Life!" I think this is one the most disappointing reads so far
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All just my opinion (as the usual disclaimer), but as far as light novels go, I have to say this is one of the most disappointing reads so far, and I've read, and even continue to read, other novels whose prose requires significant improvement.
I generally don't tend to publicly criticise much of anything but having now read a lot of light novels in the past few years, and slowly beginning to notice the differing levels of writing quality (Assuming it's the original writing and not the translation quality), I've been hesitant to pick up on new series nowadays unless the premise really strikes me. I've got a lot of series still to finish, and lots of unread books on my kindle.
So it when came to updating my library and buying the next volume of a series I've yet to even read the previous volume on (and Bookworm which I always finish reading), did I decided on this one, and for the first time a book has left me rather frustrated, not with it's writing per se (though that could do with some improvement as well I think, hard to tell with translations) but with it's light speed pacing.
I've never read anything that glossed over so many key incidents as this has.
So the point of the topic, which was partially to rant but to pose the question: Quality writing is subjective, but at what point do we all look at a novel and go this need serious improvement? Is there anyone out there that reads this and sees a fantastically written story? I'd struggle to think of anyone who looks at this and see great writing and/or pacing. Or do I now have the proverbial stick up my ass?
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@Seiya Apart from engineers and trainspotters, how many commuters care about the quality of the train that brings them to work each day?
For the most part, mass-market success is not a matter of great, but rather a matter of good enough (and marketing).
If you want a bit of low-stakes escapism where the main character defeats every threat put before him without breaking a metaphorical sweat, Acer's adventures are good enough. (I know, the stakes are technically quite high at points - but Acer is so detached and rushes through everything so quickly, it certainly doesn't feel that way.) And the premise is different enough from many of its competitors that people who've been reading one of the other series might consider it worth a look, too.
Its only when you get really into a particular series/genre/medium/whatever that you start worrying about things like its technical aspects or its quality relative to the other series in its genre.
As to whether you've got the proverbial stick up your arse... Well, maybe? The important thing to remember tends to be that, yes, even a series whose flaws are all too obvious to you really can have fans and people who sincerely enjoy reading it, and they're not necessarily wrong to do so.
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@kuali said in "Enough with This Slow Life!" I think this is one the most disappointing reads so far:
The important thing to remember tends to be that, yes, even a series whose flaws are all too obvious to you really can have fans and people who sincerely enjoy reading it, and they're not necessarily wrong to do so.
See: Quiet Blacksmith, selling thousands of copies with his cheats!
I enjoyed all of the Sharknado movies. I will never claim they are good, but to me they are fun.
I read Quiet Blacksmith, and Isekai Tensei which had a very rough first volume but which has since worked its way up to adequate.
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I read for pleasure and not be critic.. I not saying you are wrong but I only care about the story or characters or fun. I think that is how most people are.
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@Seiya I'm one of the people enjoying this series. The presentation feels more like a diary of the MC rather than a traditional novel structure. I also feel the large time jumps are a novel presentation that makes sense considering the extremely long lifespan of the MC. He goes where he wants and does what he wants, then moves on. It's not a literary masterpiece by any metric but it's interesting in a different way than usual.
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I quietly fell off of this one a while ago. We're totally spoiled for choices on Fridays, though, so it didn't leave much of a hole. I usually don't bother commenting when I drop a series unless I've been active in the discussions for that series already.
@Seiya said in "Enough with This Slow Life!" I think this is one the most disappointing reads so far:
at what point do we all look at a novel and go this need serious improvement?
I'll say that nothing "needs improvement." We're not here to give grades, but to find things we like.
While I didn't stick with this particular series, I'll happily speak up in defense of bad writing. I don't read light novels expecting them all to be good; I read light novels because there's a lot of them (and because they're of slightly higher average quality than other pools with lots of books, like Kindle Unlimited). I'd rather have 1000 bad books, 100 mediocre books, 10 good books, and 1 great book than have 10 books even if they're all great. Some of my favorite stories are probably pretty mediocre when looked at under a critical lens.
If your frustrated by feeling like you stuck with this series for too long, I recommend saving the releases you're most interested in for last each day. I take this "read the bad ones first or not at all" approach myself and it makes it easy for me to notice when a series is just in the way of the stuff I actually want to read and drop it.
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@Nutaris Agree. The time skips makes sense because it's about the life of an extremely long lived race. The time skips gives meaning to the MC as he watches time passes by for the people around him while he remains the same.
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@kuali said in "Enough with This Slow Life!" I think this is one the most disappointing reads so far:
@Seiya Apart from engineers and trainspotters, how many commuters care about the quality of the train that brings them to work each day?
For the most part, mass-market success is not a matter of great, but rather a matter of good enough (and marketing).
Using that analogy I would argue that the commuters would begin to care if starts to affect their arrival time.
So when it comes to reading a book, you want to be engrossed in it, let it flow and not have you jolted out of the experience. Which goes back to the point as you wrote, is it good enough?
Again personal opinion, as others seemed to like reading it, I don't think it is.With regards to the other comments about how the time skips seem like a natural part of the protags way of looking at things, I agree, it's a good point, it was what I thought the author was trying to do, but it doesn't make it a good idea.
As mentioned when I wrote about what I thought was a going to be a key plot point, when it got finished in less than a few pages, it really did take me out of the book that no other really has. I literally stopped, and in my mind really thought, is this it?
Taking a hyperbolic example, if I wanted to write a book about a kid, and wrote in the style how the average 10 year old would write, sure it'd be in the head of the child as he sees and thinks, but it sure as hell wouldn't make a good read though by any metric.
I'll finish the book. Again it's not the prose that I find the problem (Though yes as others have also noted not exactly a literay masterpiece either), but that pacing really does throw me off, even IF that was what the author was really aiming for.
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@Seiya I think it's because the time skips is pretty meaningless to the MC.
The MC tends to just drop everything and casually spend a decade or so to learn a skill / trade.
That time is meaningless to him. It's like Tuesday. It's emulated in how short the experience is in novel.
Meanwhile, to another race, that's a significant chunk of their life, to the point where it could define what they do for the rest of their lives.
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I dunno, maybe it's not going to be some award winning book, but it's a fairly different spin on the traditional slow life/slice of life series (I've seen some that take so long to move on from an event that covers a day or a week that you'd think the series was trying to emulate a DBZ fight). Slow life for a long lived race is like being in the HOV lane for everyone else when it comes to story.
It's sort of like, if you were to write about your experiences over the last year, are you going to write a whole oped about the guy you might have chatted with casually on the train for 10 mins once, or are you going to gloss over the entire thing, maybe mention it in passing as part of a single sentence and focus more on events that had more of a material impact on your life?
@HarmlessDave said in "Enough with This Slow Life!" I think this is one the most disappointing reads so far:
@kuali said in "Enough with This Slow Life!" I think this is one the most disappointing reads so far:
The important thing to remember tends to be that, yes, even a series whose flaws are all too obvious to you really can have fans and people who sincerely enjoy reading it, and they're not necessarily wrong to do so.
See: Quiet Blacksmith, selling thousands of copies with his cheats!
I enjoyed all of the Sharknado movies. I will never claim they are good, but to me they are fun.
I read Quiet Blacksmith, and Isekai Tensei which had a very rough first volume but which has since worked its way up to adequate.
Interestingly enough I kinda fell off Quiet Blacksmith after the entire noble heirloom sword story, I just can't really get into that series at all.
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@Nutaris The time jump is indeed the draw for me. I’m curious to see where the author takes this series since it’s quite a different take from ones I’ve read (not that my selection is diverse). My interpretation is that the author is writing this story as a creative challenge since it doesn’t fill the isekai OP trope of going through minutiae to fill word count seen in many other series. I see this LN using highlight/recap/summary writing as its primary draw.
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I'm finding it disappointing too. Not so much for the time jumps as for the choices about what gets glossed over. Volume 2 was worse than Volume 1 for me. It seemed to me that the main character made some thoughtlessly cruel decisions, especially in regard to parenting, and that's not what I'm looking for in the fiction I choose to read.
I might read a bit of Volume 3 to see if I can stomach reading the story later on. But for me so far this series started off doing some interesting things, but then didn't live up to the potential I saw for it. I think a long-lived character and time jumps are an interesting idea, but I didn't like how the author did it.
I'm not sure to what extent the author is oblivious to the cruelty I infer in the places he glosses over, or if the character is oblivious but the author is aware, but either way it is affecting my enjoyment of the story.
I think with so many gaps in the narrative, it makes even more difference than usual what life experience and mental models the reader brings to the story.
As a reader, one of the most important qualities that I look for in fiction is whether I feel like I can trust the author. In this one, I don't feel like I can trust the author. I suppose that's similar to what you mentioned about feeling jolted out of the story. I feel like, with the loss of that trust in the author, my suspension of disbelief becomes unwilling.
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I'll step up in defense of this one. I'm still in the first volume, but have really been enjoying it. The spartan description of long passages of time seems to be in keeping with the gimmick of the character--a long-lived, perpetually bored elf in want of excitement--and I think the approach is clever and well-characterized in that regard. It opens up interesting avenues as the lives of friends and companions fast-forward in front of his eyes, and the readers'.
It chooses an almost episodic incident or period to zoom in on for a bit, then we're back into time skips before the next one, with some linking tissue. It's cute. It also prevents it from every feeling slow-paced despite the lack of action, which is a clever subversion on the subgenre it's part of. Aside of the content, the English translation is also really well-handled; breezy and voicey and engaging.
Really, the only thing that gets me is the isekai/reincarnation seeming a liiittle tacked-on--most of it could work just being a fantasy sans that element--but I suppose even that helps justify why the main elf feels the way he does and allows for expedient context here and there, so there's no harm in it either. It's a genre concession I think you can pretty easily make.
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@Ian-S said in "Enough with This Slow Life!" I think this is one the most disappointing reads so far:
Really, the only thing that gets me is the isekai/reincarnation seeming a liiittle tacked-on--most of it could work just being a fantasy sans that element--but I suppose even that helps justify why the main elf feels the way he does and allows for expedient context here and there, so there's no harm in it either. It's a genre concession I think you can pretty easily make.
It does justify him being the only high elf out in the human world, and him being a high elf is a central part of the story.
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@strangeattractor said in "Enough with This Slow Life!" I think this is one the most disappointing reads so far:
I'm finding it disappointing too. Not so much for the time jumps as for the choices about what gets glossed over. Volume 2 was worse than Volume 1 for me. It seemed to me that the main character made some thoughtlessly cruel decisions, especially in regard to parenting, and that's not what I'm looking for in the fiction I choose to read.
I might read a bit of Volume 3 to see if I can stomach reading the story later on. But for me so far this series started off doing some interesting things, but then didn't live up to the potential I saw for it. I think a long-lived character and time jumps are an interesting idea, but I didn't like how the author did it.
I'm not sure to what extent the author is oblivious to the cruelty I infer in the places he glosses over, or if the character is oblivious but the author is aware, but either way it is affecting my enjoyment of the story.
I think with so many gaps in the narrative, it makes even more difference than usual what life experience and mental models the reader brings to the story.
As a reader, one of the most important qualities that I look for in fiction is whether I feel like I can trust the author. In this one, I don't feel like I can trust the author. I suppose that's similar to what you mentioned about feeling jolted out of the story. I feel like, with the loss of that trust in the author, my suspension of disbelief becomes unwilling.
As somebody who's dropped quite a few novels just because I couldn't deal with the theoretically sympathetic characters being too cruel and/or the author seeming way too fine with them being so, I feel you.
I didn't quite see it here; I thought the MC was rather blind to some stuff going on around him because he couldn't quite relate, but nothing that would jump out at me as cruel. Would you elaborate, please?
@Ian-S said in "Enough with This Slow Life!" I think this is one the most disappointing reads so far:
Really, the only thing that gets me is the isekai/reincarnation seeming a liiittle tacked-on--most of it could work just being a fantasy sans that element--but I suppose even that helps justify why the main elf feels the way he does and allows for expedient context here and there, so there's no harm in it either. It's a genre concession I think you can pretty easily make.
It could have easily been a story of an elf who's just a little different from the other elves; after all, elves are not mandated to be all the same. But nowadays. isekai just gets put in everything because it's popular.
There's quite a few series where I'd prefer if it wasn't isekai - this one for sure, Dahlia comes to mind too, no doubt a few others if I though about it some more.
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@Pieta said in "Enough with This Slow Life!" I think this is one the most disappointing reads so far:
As somebody who's dropped quite a few novels just because I couldn't deal with the theoretically sympathetic characters being too cruel and/or the author seeming way too fine with them being so, I feel you.
I didn't quite see it here; I thought the MC was rather blind to some stuff going on around him because he couldn't quite relate, but nothing that would jump out at me as cruel. Would you elaborate, please?
The main character was cruel to the half-elf boy Win's human biological mother.
There's an offhand comment Acer makes near the end of Volume 1 that is something like "I'll go pick up the half-elf baby before enough time passes that bonds form between parent and child."
Then he waits 3 years.
Aaaaaaaaaargh! No no no no no!
I am a parent of a 1.5 year old. If someone took my child away from me forever, my feelings would be beyond words. Some words anyway: livid, heartbroken, plotting vengeance on whoever did it.
1.5 years is half the time of 3 years, and from personal experience I can tell you that there are definitely bonds between parent and child by that point. Bonds form much much earlier, I'd say within weeks, but also I was protecting my child as best as I could before they were born.
Acer was cruel to Win's bio-Mom because he couldn't be bothered to get the timescale right, and not for any good reason, just because he didn't think it through, and a different time scale might involve some inconvenience for him.
3 years is either too long or too short. Another problem - he didn't ask Win's bio-Mom what she wanted. As far as I can tell, he didn't talk to her at all.
If Win's bio-Mom does not want to be a parent, then she has to spend 3 years looking after her rapists' child. That is not an insignificant amount of time for a human.
If Win's bio-Mom wants to be Win's parent, why not invite her to join Acer on his travels? Why take him away?
It seems like the author just wanted to gloss over "And then Acer got a half-elf kid" but without putting enough thought into it.
Then in Volume 2, Acer takes Win away from the caregiver who has been giving him some stability for some bullshit reason like "He's going to find out that humans are short-lived so he might as well start now."
That's not how child development works! It's not ok to have an attitude like "Let's start traumatizing the child because eventually he's going to be traumatized anyway." Early experiences matter! It is better to give a young child as good a start as you can.
People move to different cities or change childcare providers all the time, and it isn't necessarily traumatizing. Even so, early childhood experience is not something to dismiss so lightly. It's not as cruel as what he did to Win's bio-Mom, but it wasn't good either.
Acer was inconsiderate to Win and Nonna to separate them, and inconsiderate to the people he was going to live with by showing up without childcare taken care of.
Having another adult around to help would have been helpful. He could have invited Nonna to join them at least for a while when moving to the other country. Acer has money. Nonna may have been willing to travel. He could have showed up with a nanny, instead of expecting the other people to rearrange their lives to take care of Win.
He could have helped Nonna find someone to take over her duties at the restaurant and inn. Finding someone to be a waitress is easier than finding someone to trust with your child. Or even if they left Nonna behind, he could have encouraged visits or keeping in touch somehow. Send each other drawings in the mail or something.
It's all just so thoughtless.
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@strangeattractor said in "Enough with This Slow Life!" I think this is one the most disappointing reads so far:
The main character was cruel to the half-elf boy Win's human biological mother.
You've missed a key point, the mother was an elf.
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@strangeattractor
Correction: Elvish mother.
Who bore a child as a result of repeated rape.
And we were given every reason to believe that if he hadn't agreed to take care of Win they'd have killed him at birth, if not aborting him earlier.The cruelty was in waiting three years, yes.
Because it forced someone to care for Win for that period of time when they had no desire to do so.The fear was bonds forming on the part of the child, as the whole problem was that there would be no bonds formed by the Elven parent.
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I dare you to take care of a child for 3 years without forming any bonds with them.
Maybe some people could do it. Not me.
Edit: I see you pointed out Win's bio-Mom is an elf rather than a human. That may make the time mismatch not as bad, but I still think Acer is misjudging it given the difference in lifespan between elves and high elves.
Acer assumed he knew what the parent wanted without directly asking them. His assumptions could be wrong. He didn't bother to find out.
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@strangeattractor said in "Enough with This Slow Life!" I think this is one the most disappointing reads so far:
@Pieta said in "Enough with This Slow Life!" I think this is one the most disappointing reads so far:
As somebody who's dropped quite a few novels just because I couldn't deal with the theoretically sympathetic characters being too cruel and/or the author seeming way too fine with them being so, I feel you.
I didn't quite see it here; I thought the MC was rather blind to some stuff going on around him because he couldn't quite relate, but nothing that would jump out at me as cruel. Would you elaborate, please?
The main character was cruel to the half-elf boy Win's human biological mother.
There's an offhand comment Acer makes near the end of Volume 1 that is something like "I'll go pick up the half-elf baby before enough time passes that bonds form between parent and child."
Then he waits 3 years.
Aaaaaaaaaargh! No no no no no!
I am a parent of a 1.5 year old. If someone took my child away from me forever, my feelings would be beyond words. Some words anyway: livid, heartbroken, plotting vengeance on whoever did it.
1.5 years is half the time of 3 years, and from personal experience I can tell you that there are definitely bonds between parent and child by that point. Bonds form much much earlier, I'd say within weeks, but also I was protecting my child as best as I could before they were born.
Acer was cruel to Win's bio-Mom because he couldn't be bothered to get the timescale right, and not for any good reason, just because he didn't think it through, and a different time scale might involve some inconvenience for him.
3 years is either too long or too short. Another problem - he didn't ask Win's bio-Mom what she wanted. As far as I can tell, he didn't talk to her at all.
If Win's bio-Mom does not want to be a parent, then she has to spend 3 years looking after her rapists' child. That is not an insignificant amount of time for a human.
If Win's bio-Mom wants to be Win's parent, why not invite her to join Acer on his travels? Why take him away?
Others mentioned the mother being an elf, but besides that, those are great points. If you know you want to adopt a baby, you don't pick them at your convenience and make somebody else care for them in the meantime. Picking them up at the earliest would be way better.
And if it can't be helped then you definitely should talk with their, uh, interim parents over the whole thing, and make sure they're fine with it the whole time, not just because they said something ahead of the actual birth.
It seems like the author just wanted to gloss over "And then Acer got a half-elf kid" but without putting enough thought into it.
Yeah, this is very much on point. It read like that to me even before this discussion too.
Then in Volume 2, Acer takes Win away from the caregiver who has been giving him some stability for some bullshit reason like "He's going to find out that humans are short-lived so he might as well start now."
That's not how child development works! It's not ok to have an attitude like "Let's start traumatizing the child because eventually he's going to be traumatized anyway." Early experiences matter! It is better to give a young child as good a start as you can.
People move to different cities or change childcare providers all the time, and it isn't necessarily traumatizing. Even so, early childhood experience is not something to dismiss so lightly. It's not as cruel as what he did to Win's bio-Mom, but it wasn't good either.
Acer was inconsiderate to Win and Nonna to separate them, and inconsiderate to the people he was going to live with by showing up without childcare taken care of.
Having another adult around to help would have been helpful. He could have invited Nonna to join them at least for a while when moving to the other country. Acer has money. Nonna may have been willing to travel. He could have showed up with a nanny, instead of expecting the other people to rearrange their lives to take care of Win.
He could have helped Nonna find someone to take over her duties at the restaurant and inn. Finding someone to be a waitress is easier than finding someone to trust with your child. Or even if they left Nonna behind, he could have encouraged visits or keeping in touch somehow. Send each other drawings in the mail or something.
It's all just so thoughtless.
At that point, Nonna was more of a parent to Win than Acer was. She took care of him almost full-time, while Acer showed up after work. Separating them was definitely not a good move.
Acer might not have the experience to understand the situation, he mentions that he was basically brought up by the elven community instead of individual parents, but that's not how Win was brought up. He gave Win what's pretty close to a typical human family, then took them apart again.
You're right. I didn't give it much thought while reading the books, except for the Nonna situation which jumped at me, but in retrospect there were quite a few instances of Acer treating Win as somebody he owns, and treating him as convenient to himself as opposed to thinking about Win first. We don't even see him tying to find out more about how (non-high) elven upbringing usually works.
