HOLY SHIT THIS BOOK IS FUCKING HORRIBLE. And I can say that cause the "writer" uses "fucking" as a verb, adverb, past participle, adjective, pronoun and any other fucking grammatical bit she wants, except it rarely or never shows up in actual dialog. AI slop is better written.

This is SUPPOSED to be a mystery novel, instead it is a novel about some hot chick falling into instant lust with her adopted younger brother and her making "jokes" instead of boinking him. It's also about as Korean as a Chinese Buffet.As interesting as watching your poop float in a toilet.

This is the epitome of trash tier.

This book is atrocious. The translator even admits in the intro "I just translate based off of what I feel like it should be", to paraphrase. So she decided to call the last king of the Shang by the name of Zhou, fine, but she stated she is going to call the name of the next dynasty, called Zhou, as Chou, so as to avoid vonfusion. Not...so fine...you see, she doesn't even FINISH the story. The Zhou dynasty, which could easily be called just be called "The Zhou Dynasty" to avoid confusion with "King Zhou", is never actually formed in her translation. After 450 page, in the midst of the biggest, most important battle, she just ENDS THE BOOK. There's a LOT more to be translated after this. But no, she just decides she got bored of translating and decided to stop. She was 'kind' enough to write an Epilogue that said, "Oh and a bunch of these guys died, the Shang dynasty fell and was replaced by the Zhou dynasty, the end".

She doesn't even explain the freaking Investiture of the Gods. I had known the importance of it from Hong Kong manhua and Japanese manga already, but the only thing this book mentions about it is that it exists, and some dead people go to the "Altar of the Investiture of the Gods", but she never explains why, or what for, or anything else. It's the freaking book's title!

It's like as if JRR Tolkien decided to not state the importance of the One Ring, yet called his story "The One Ring" but decided to end the trilogy at the end of book one with an epilogue show more going, "Oh yeah, Frodo traveled to Mordor, threw the One Ring away, some friends of his may have died."

The "translation" is pretty atrocious as well. Primary offenses include calling Nu Wa "Snail Goddess Nu Wa Niang Niang". That name is not only terrible but also terribly inaccurate. This implies she's a goddess of snails, which she is NOT. Nu Wa is sometimes depicted with the lower half of a SNAKE for her body. She's also the goddess that created humans. Not snails. Nothing to do with snails. Further, 'Niang Niang' not only sounds idiotic, but it's also not even translated, which is, you know, a translator's duty. 'Niang Niang' could mean anything between queen, empress, imperial concubine, mother, aunt, or up to goddess. So she's calling Nu Wa (which, by the way, simply 'Nu Wa' is fine, it is her name) "Snail Goddess Nu Wa Goddess". She also calls Su Daji at one point "Su Daji Niang Niang" but doesn't even infer which meaning of 'niang niang' she wants for Daji. She also calls for no reason 'Jiang Ziya' by the appalling appellation of 'Jiang Baby Tooth'. We meet this character, who is perhaps the most important character in the story, when he's an elderly man. He's also supposed to be an incredible genius. Yet with the name "Jiang Baby Tooth" he sounds like a moronic child. Lesser offenses include "Lord of National Security, Yellow Flying Tiger" ALWAYS being "Lord of National Security, Yellow Flying Tiger" even when he's no longer the Lord of anything, even when the evil Tiger clan he's in no way related to is doing evil stuff, and even when he's working against the person who gave him the title in the first place; and "Capital City, Morning Song" always being "Capital City, Morning Song". People can understand variety here, you can call it that once or twice, then just start to call it, "The Imperial City", or "The Capital City" or just "Morning Song" and people will be fine with it. Heck, you can just call it the name of the actual city, Zhaoge (names of specific places should never be translated, the city of Zhaoge is just the city of Zhaoge in English).

Terrible translation, gives up right at the most important part, several important characters looking utterly ridiculous just by the naming scheme, no rhyme or reason in translating names...this is by far the worst book I've had the displeasure of forcing myself to finish reading.

Get yourself "Fengshen Ji", the Hong Kong manhua or the Japanese manga "Hoshin Engi" instead. Heck, play the Warriors Orochi games instead even! Even that video game, with the sparse information it has, was more detailed about this story than this translation was. show less

First off, this is a book of critical essays. As such, it's only of interest to a select few people.

Now, that said, not all the essays are very good. Some are written far too bland even for an essay. Some don't understand the subject material, or try to shoehorn in some thought that's not really belonging to the subject material.

As it is a collection of essays, some will be better written than others, but some of the subject matter may be better than others as well. An example would be someone who doesn't care about the Harry Potter franchise, they'd likely also not care about the essay in this book dealing with said franchise. Another may be of a story you enjoy, but the essay material isn't your thing.

Really, it's hard to recommend this book to the general populace. However, it would be of interest to a few people, and then it would likely be of great interest to them. For a casual fan of the genres or franchises it represents, I'd say if at least 3 essays in the book interest you, it would be worth a purchase.