Just finished waybound. Took me 6 hours straight and totally smashed my sleep schedule but I’m finally finished with cradle. I though the book was pretty satisfying and entertaining but not anything more. I might update my this when it’s not 5am and I’ve had time to process my thoughts.

idk what did y’all think

 

Will Wright’s Cradle series?

I think I’ve heard of it, but haven’t read it - Would you recommend picking it up?

 

I would recommend the series if you enjoy the xianxia genre but hate reading translated web novels like I do.

I’ve read up to book 8 (I think? It’s been a while.) and so far it’s been standard xianxia tropes just with the Chinese terms changed (e.g. madra instead of qi). The plot doesn’t really break the mold or go outside of the genre conventions IMO.

There’s no crappy harem tropes though, in case that’s a deal breaker for you.

In terms of writing quality I thought it was a cut above your standard Royal Road fare.

All in all, I enjoyed what I read and will catch up and finish it at some point, but it’s no Virtuous Sons.

 

Cradle is great (and complete, as of a couple weeks ago). It's the gateway drug to xianxia; progression fantasy with many of the standard xianxia tropes, but repackaged into a more... palatable? digestible? (not sure what the right word here is; less foreign and more comprehensible without knowing asian culture) form and written by a native English speaker with all the readability and quality implications thereof.

If you're at all interested in Xianxia as a concept, 100% recommend checking Cradle out. If absolutely nothing else, it'll tell you if the genre is one you'll enjoy.

 

I found it to be one if not the weakest book in the series and I think it really struggled with bringing the series to an satisfying end in a relatively short timeframe. There was a bit too much power-leveling and divergent plot-points being brought to an end and I don't think it did quite a few of the characters much justice.

Still it had its entertaining moments and while it wasn't a fantastic end to the series it also wasn't a catastrophic one and honestly compared to a lot of xianxia this probably ranks quite high up since that genre sucks when it comes to endings. And overall Cradle remains one of the better xianxia stories out there, in no small part because I don't have to preface a suggestion to it with countless warnings about problematic elements in the story like I would have to do with most original xianxia.

 

I enjoyed it and recommend Cradle for folks into xianxia (Asian themed martial hero fantasy). While perhaps not the strongest book in the series, it managed to wrap things up fairly well, which I was worried about. I imagine it's no small feat to pull this off once the power levels for the main characters become literally other-worldly and one has to really stretch to find ways to keep raising the stakes. Overall, there was enough humor to keep the tone light and the characters carried the story.

I regard Cradle as one of the best xianxia progression fantasy series out there and this was a fitting end. Now if Jim Butcher could finish Dresden half as well as Will Wight did Cradle, I'd be delighted. (Hell, if he could even just finish his series, full stop...)

 

As someone who generally isn't into xianxia style stories, I found the Cradle series to be an unexpected delight and would recommend it to anyone. The narrator for the audiobooks is great, and I've listened to the entire series three times now because it's literary comfort food. I do wish we had a few more quiet periods to just settle with the characters, but a breakneck pacing seems to be a staple of this genre.

One thing I've noticed on repeat listens is that the author is extremely consistent with the themes and motifs throughout the series, and it's amusing to see the greediest boy in existence steal bits and pieces from everything he encounters. Some people have complained about Lindon being a dry, flat character, but I found his understated determination and quiet menace to be a nice change of pace. The narrator also just does a great job of highlighting the humour of the novels.

I found the story really comes into its own with Ghostwater, and Wintersteel is another highlight. Both represent significant milestones for Lindon's progression and I've probably listened to them the most.

As for Waybound, I liked it quite a bit. I do wish we had a bit more hyperbolic timechamber shenanigans, but that's alright. The final fights were suitably epic in scope and I loved where each character ended up. I really appreciate that the book had essentially a long epilogue to see the characters off, which is not typically the case for long fantasy series for some reason.

 

So it doesn’t have an arrogant young master who dreams of sexually dominating the protagonists women and any other women connected to the main characters friends?

 

Not that I can remember. I have vague memories of early in the series there being some guy who wants Yerin, the (only) love interest and arguably deuteragonist of the series, but even if he does actually exist, nothing in the series comes anywhere close to how cartoonish some xianxia can be on the topic.

 

Definite no on this one, fortunately. I feel like the author made a conscious effort to avoid a lot of the cringiest, basement dweller hallmarks of xianxia that may have been put off readers from the genre in the past. So, you see the main character setup all sorts of flags with women and then just... not do anything with it because it's not that kind of story.

The end result is that all romantic aspects of the narrative are slow, chaste and surprisingly wholesome. That's not what I usually require in my novels, but it was exactly what was needed to get me into this genre in particular.

 

Well, I picked it up and read all 12. Thanks to all for the recommendation.

I fully agree with the above. I definitely enjoyed this series and the characters in it. Particularly Lindon, Eithan, and Yerin.

I have a few minor nitpicks. The cutaway scenes to the higher dimensions and the Abidan I didn't find very interesting. Overall they were probably necessary to illustrate where the characters would eventually ascend to, but I found this the weakest part of the story.

I did not like the names of the "realms", mostly because of how tediously common some variation of calling people "golds" is in YA-ish fiction. Lowgold, highgold, midgold, truegold, whatever. Every time I read it the words were stabbing my eyes.

It was already said, but I have to say it again - the breakneck pacing was fun, but I would have appreciated more time with the characters, since they were well written and generally speaking their non-combat interactions were my favorite parts of the books to read.

By that metric, the last book was the weakest ... But that's not really fair to it imo, it was the payoff for all the climbing and effort that we saw the characters go through, the fights were definitely cool, and the series came to an overall satisfying conclusion. Even if I preferred the quieter/slower moving earlier books, I can't complain about how it ended.

Overall, I quite liked it. Thanks again for the rec.