Book Review: Adonis
Well, I never intended to read something longer than the bible in this lifetime, but here we are.
So, what in the heck is Adonis? Well, it's a korean fantasy/romance/action novel series. It spans 12 volumes with over 4500 pages. Of course, I started reading without being aware of this funny little fact. Another funny fact is that I'm a very obsessive reader, meaning if I don't finish something in one go, then I'm not putting it down. It's an understatement to say that I instantly got hooked on the story. The character building is slow, but pays off massively towards the mid point. The world and it's mechanisms are, and I emphasize, VERY detailed. Not in the way of filling chapters upon chapters with useless information and stalling the story, but by having a known system for everything being encountered. Every nook and cranny of this series is packed with the history of a world that doesn't exist. To say the least, I was taken aback.
By the time I realized that one chapter took on average 3 hours to read, it was too late. The next 3 weeks of pure reading began. I slacked off on anything not important and school work, and was reading 24/7. This is what I meant by me having very bad reading habits. Anyway, I was done with the series in roughly 3 weeks. I'm honestly very grateful for this piece of work being fully translated on a professional level. It was a delight to read every chapter. So thanks Sephi, you're a true hero.
The action is very dynamic and detailed. It really hits home reading a fighting sequence after building up all of the prerequisite knowledge to understand what's going on. The entire system of magic and energies behind the combat is even more interesting. I mean, I was expecting the default cookie cutter 'Mana this' and 'Mana that' explanation, but then it just went off the rails hard. The entire magic system in the series ties back into the storyline, majorly. This series goes very in-depth into mythology, gods, religion and creation. So don't worry, every little thing in this series, whatever or whoever it may be, can be rationally explained, and will be explained. There are characters at the beginning, who I didn't really give much attention to coming back at the end to drop major revalations, and for good reasons as well! Noone is a surface level character, even if they seem like it. It's insane the amount of depth everything and everybody named in this series has. The main characters Ianna and Arhad are very nicely polished and honestly quite dull at the beginning. That's why it's just pure joy to watch these people grow and broaden their horizons to then finally achieve their goals. As the very last sentence in the series states, this is their tale of mutual victory.
From the middle towards the end, the main characters get a little too lovey-dovey in my opinion, but that is strongly negated by the insane pressure this series builds up at the end. Now that is how you write the good stuff! Higher stakes, higher risks, uncertainty and despair! This author pulls it off like it's a walk in the park for him. I felt so euphoric after reading through this series. The melancholy did kick in the next day, but after reading so much of this series, the end didn't feel rushed or drawn out. It was perfect and it knew when it was time to close the curtains. This gets an absolute 10/10 from me, hands down longest thing I've ever read.
Lastly, because I'm very touchy about losing data and especially stuff like this, which is hosted on a random wordpress site that could disappear any second, I decided to take steps to preserve this masterpiece. After more than 3 days of work, tada! You can read the entire thing on this custom webspace I've made for it! I'm honestly very happy with how the formatting and ToC turned out. Well then, until next time!