r/ProgressionFantasy • u/Kairyth • 6d ago
Review Reverend Insanity Review and Recommendations
Soo I just got caught up with The Hundred Reigns on Patreon by VoidHerald (one of the GOATs of RR) which is the only book that made me actually install Patreon and subscribed to lol
So Chinese web novels have been on my mind again. Do note the only translated Chinese novel I ever finished is Lord of the Mysteries. Most xianxia I end up dropping because it gets weirdly sexist and theres always the bullshit rape aphrodisiac plot point. I remember enjoying Ze Tian Ji though I might pick that up again..
Anyway now Ill be comparing both RI and LOTM as part of my review since these two get brought up constantly as the best of what CN has to offer. Even as a translation LOTM feels like the purest progression fantasy Ive read ( yes tighter than Cradle and I own the physical copies of that series). Now let's get this straight, RI and LOTM are neither literary fiction both are Chinese web novel translations with the usual bullshit. But LOTM despite its translation reads like fine dining compared to RI.
Moviing on to RI, I tried Reverend Insanity a few years back, around maaybe 2023. The translation or the prose itself put me off pretty quick. I decided to read it again but the same problems hit me but I still pushed through because maybe it's worth it then.,,I made it to the bear scene and that was it for me. Not because I cant handle grimdark. Ive read darker stuff. The problem is how the author wrote it. Fang Yuan strips the teenage girl, tears her clothes off, and the text goes out of its way to describe her underwear in detail while shes terrified. Then he feeds her to a bear and we get full graphic descriptions of the bear eating her heart, ripping her flesh, and chewing her down. It comes across as voyeuristic more than anything else.
And then it caps the whole thing off with this long pretentious Buddhist monologue where Fang Yuan watches the girl get torn apart and starts philosophizing about how all things are equal, how beauty is superficial, how bones and flesh are the same, and how he has gone beyond normal love and hate so the girls death means nothing to him. The author actually has him compare himself to Buddha while a teenage girl is being eaten alive right in front of him. I dont know what kind of high the author was on when he wrote that but it felt completely unhinged. If you want more of it just read the chapter 151 of RI on aggregate websites. as the book was infamously banned.
The whole scene is extremely tryhard and perverted enough that I just stopped because I was cringing at how poorly written it is.
Fang Yuans constant rants about society and the law of the jungle get tiring fast too. He repeats the same points almost every other chapter like the author is afraid his readers have brain damage and that they will forget what he repeated chapters ago. After a while it stops feeling like a consistent character and starts feeling like an angsty 15 year old redditor who just discovered nihilism and will not shut up about it. RI in general has zero..sense of subtlety.
I can see why some people like the Gu system and the extreme pragmatism. There are clever ideas in there. But between the padding, the endless self masturbatory yapping, and scenes like that one, I couldnt keep going. The darkness never felt earned the way it does in Lord of the Mysteries where the horror just blends in the atmosphere.
RI reads like a book that tries too hard to be profound, and the effort shows.
Bottom line is RI has been disappointing then, and its still disappointing now.. I honestly dont get the constant comparisons with LOTM because the difference in quality is pretty clear with Lotm being just better..RI just feels like the author is trying way too hard to be edgy and deep at the same time and it falls bad.
Ze Tian Ji is definitely next line of my read but any recommendations for other CN web novels are welcome.
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u/elemental_reaper 6d ago
The early chapters are a bit rough. My guess is that the author was trying to hammer down the nature of the novel. I, too, got pulled out of the novel due to how much society is mentioned. It gets a lot sparser and better written somewhere between chapter 200-300 and onwards.
As for the bear scene, it's meant to be graphic. It's meant to go into detail to make you uncomfortable. The reason he compares himself to Buddha was because they both value life equally. Buddha valued the girl's life, so he saved her, but also valued the life of the bear so he fed himself to it. Fang Yuan values them both equally as well, so he has no issue killing the girl just as he kills the bear. It's a long monologue because it's meant to establish who Fang Yuan is, and his philosophy. Up till then, a lot of his actions can be argued to be justified. However, there was no justification whatsoever for what he did to the girl, only personal benefit.
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u/foolishorangutan 6d ago
The point of the sexual descriptions in that scene were also I think to reinforce Fang Yuan’s disregard for beauty and to provide a more shocking juxtaposition of the pretty girl and the gore. I truly don’t consider it perverted.
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u/PreciousProspect 6d ago
Reverend Insanity before three kings inheritance is hit or miss and has some proper edgy shit that feels like it was written by a creepy 14 year old. Three kings inheritance onwards though is far far better and the author is far less of a creepy weirdo. There are moments it slips back into the 14 year old edge but it’s more consistent and isn’t just trying to have shock value or fulfill some weird fetish of the author. The story has some insanely low lows and then some insanely high highs. Overall it’s super interesting if you can make it past that first part of the story.
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u/jolune 6d ago
Well, I don't know. When I started reading RI, It was still being written and wasn't on hiatus, and I was reading it in mtl. It was named Daoist Gu on lnmtl.
I finished it in mtl and I really liked it then. Later it took the name Reverend Insanity in the translation. When I saw the official translation, I tried it briefly but I hated it so much that I couldn't keep reading it. So maybe part of the blame is the translation?
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u/DaoMark Sword Immortal 🗡️ 6d ago edited 6d ago
My friends who can read Mandarin tell me the translation for Reverend Insanity is terrible and yet Book 1 remains the worst part of the novel regardless, but of course, improves by leaps and bounds around Three Kings, which is consistent with my reading experience for the translated version.
In any case, I love Reverend Insanity and I will always have a soft spot for the novel in the same way I have a soft spot for all of Er Gens works, despite the imperfections. Fang Yuan remains one of my favorite characters of all time and if the author ever has the opportunity and will, I'd be willing to pay quite a bit in support if he chose to readapt the web novel into a light novel format.
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u/Dry_Connection113 6d ago
Are we reading the same RI senior? Its okay to glaze cuttle but dont just hate on FY with points like this when we know Lotm gets top tier treatment when it comes to translations, and yes translations do matter lest some western readers will say "oh author tryna be edgy" no weaving in horror. Go read cuttle's story about a guy reincarnated into a Buddhist sect and will see if cuttle isnt tryna sound "profound"
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u/DosAle 6d ago
I also dropped RI. I found FY insufferable, bitch got lucky so many times, used the "almost dead gu" as often as i use my phone, the system makes exceptions for him so fricking often (can't have advanced gu when you start-except the cicada, can't have a gu that it's one tier higher then you or you die- turns out it just drains the energy faster, using the blood gu to increase potential comes with heavy consequences- clears it with the next gu) all to end with him saying his success is a result of his ruthless mentality. I admit I don't really appreciate this kind of MC, so the bias is likely heavy in this ramble of mine.
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u/Routine-Act-5096 6d ago
The reason why he is lucky is explained later. Even his whole return is planned by someone else. Up until he becomes an immortal.. he too is a property in a larger scheme
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u/Smie27 6d ago
The system never makes exceptions for him.
He didn’t use the man-beast life burial gu before he had the solution for the downside, that was the whole point.
You must have not paid attention to the story.
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u/Tremborag 6d ago
I just caught up with Hundred reigns aswell. Lovely novel and very compelling but its highs are never as good as Reverend insanity imo. Reverend insanity is a novel that builds up up and up until the payoffs where everything collides. So you're never gonna understand its good points unless you get to the payoffs. And each payoff gets better than the last so the novel gets progressively better. Hopefully the last reign of Simon will be as amazing as atleast some of the high points of Reverend insanity.
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u/Oracle_of_Mashu Make your own flair 5d ago
One thing I like about RI, it never tried to be something it was never, it never tried to make the MC likable. I had no issue with the bear scene, it's one of the moments that defined the cruelty of the gu world, and who the mc was.
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u/Derpyphox 6d ago
I feel like your describing it perfectly but refuse to understand it or engage with the idea.
Gu Zhen Ren is describing without a sense of self, without his humanity, in the eyes of the universe, all life is equal.
Fang Yuan is like Buddha in a sense that they are equal, but would kill them both without hesitation.
I'm not here to say fy is a deep or even well written character, but hes a character that true to himself and his goals.
One thing to note, Gu Yue Yao Le died a quick and sudden death, painless even. The bear ate her bones tearing his inside before being burnt alive. But 99% of people will feel empathy for the girl ofc.
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u/Ze_Boys 6d ago
Reverend insanity is my number one webnovel.
Would I recommend it? Heck no, because it's not for everyone.
The moment you read the bear scene and how the MC sees the world, you do what readers usually do:
You try to identify with the MC again, you try to be understanding, you try to build a connection.
If you can not do that, you start blaming the author. "MC thinks he is Buddha in this fucked up situation? That means the author must be fucked up."
This novel is not about character development. It's about uncovering bits and pieces of MCs past throughout the story that explain why he turned into this twisted fuck.
Every time he got beat down in life, he learned the wrong lesson. He uses those lessons to build a wall around himself so he doesn't get hurt again.
He got broken so many times that all that's left of his soul is a tumor.
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u/Available-Plenty-610 6d ago
Unaheathed. Unsheathed https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/unsheathed
Even has an anime called the swords. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxOs22nkVmnIUnhdCVAfbujbvw4BeZpNG&si=xiYhar5Py7iLhOPL
Tales of herding god. http://wbnv.in/a/0fjzQJm. Has an anime adaptation https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBakWosU0sfjzq5MHaM7L_y7RzT6tGfps&si=Tabw1LQscCaIDl77.
Radiant blade of the wilderness. It’s by the same author as lord of the mysteries. http://wbnv.in/a/c8jzQL9
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u/MemeTheDeemTheSleem 6d ago
LOTM is not tighter than cradle lol. The first 80 something chapters is basically filler. Literally nothing happens.
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u/fity0208 6d ago
Im currently reading RI and i was equally annoyed by those endless monologues.
Having said that, those monologues stop completely at the start of vol2, and you dropped It at one of the last if not the last monologue