Apocalypse Recast Really Needs to Be Recast

Preface

I've been busy with a project lately, and the only entertainment I sneak in is reading novels.

Not long ago I just finished Chenxing's I Have a Suite in the Apocalypse. Because it predicted the Russia-Ukraine war, this novel was quite popular for a while, so I jumped on the bandwagon and started reading it. It was pretty good; I didn't expect Chenxing's first book to be written so well.

After I finished both the novel and the comic of "Have a Suite", I still wanted more, so I kept looking for other apocalypse-themed novels.

While browsing WeChat Reading, I found this book Apocalypse Recast. The opening seemed decent enough, so I stuck with it until I finished the whole thing.

Halfway through I already had that feeling of tasteless to eat, a pity to throw away. On one hand there were things to roast everywhere; on the other I still wanted to see how the protagonist and a few supporting characters ended up. I didn't expect it to actually fizzle out at the end!

So I had to write this review.

Plot

It's been several days since I finished it, maybe a little over a week, and my memory is a bit fuzzy. That's how web novels are—fast-food literature that you forget as soon as you finish.

This section is heavily spoilery, but since I won't be recommending this book, a few spoilers don't matter.

The protagonist is named Chu Han. The story's premise is that the apocalypse arrives out of nowhere; the protagonist has already survived ten years in it, then at the start of the story he inexplicably travels back to the day before the apocalypse broke out ten years earlier. With ten years of apocalypse experience, he shows off in the coming apocalypse—fighting his way across the world, becoming the Chosen One, and so on. Classic power-fantasy formula, that's it.

Based on the plot, Chu Han's growth can roughly be divided into three stages:

• Stage one: The apocalypse begins. The protagonist fights his way out of the university campus, unlocks a "system" cheat, and makes a bunch of friends.
• Stage two: The protagonist obtains a dedicated weapon, his combat power soars, he accepts the rank of Huaxia general and starts building a base and developing his own faction. Up until he clashes with the mysterious families.
• Stage three: The protagonist's origins are revealed—he's actually the Chosen One. He one-shots a bunch of mysterious families and "recasts" again.

The only part that's actually readable is basically stage one. In stage two there was only a tiny bit of plot still pulling me along. Stage three I was reading purely out of stubbornness—I really wanted to know how these people ended up, whether any of the holes got filled. But given this book's usual style, what was I even expecting...

Complaints

I won't even mention the logical mess that's a common disease of web novels. You read web fiction to relax; it doesn't need much depth. Thinking is tiring.

The romance plot collapsed

My view is, if the author can't write romance, don't gild the lily. This novel even has a bit of a harem flavor (multiple female supporting characters), but I really didn't get the romance plot. The protagonist never developed or cultivated any feelings with these people, so why do the female supporting characters' feelings come out of nowhere...

Fine, they wrote it anyway. But then what's with the ending? There isn't even a wedding. It's all muddled with no concrete wrap-up.

By comparison, the romance in Jiao Jie's The Live-in Son-in-Law is much more reasonable. It's incredible that a guy could have such delicate prose.

What shocked me even more is that the author of Apocalypse Recast is actually a woman. This kind of male-oriented novel was written by a woman—you couldn't tell at all from the writing, hahaha.

Later when I was browsing forums I also saw a lot of male authors writing female-oriented fiction, and conversely many female authors writing male-oriented fiction. That also shows how easily we form stereotypes about different genders.

Bai Yun'er

Bai Yun'er is a female character in the novel. The author describes her as very aloof, cold-blooded, killing without batting an eye, and she only likes the protagonist Chu Han.

But midway through there's a very melodramatic plot: Bai Yun'er is taken away by her family and has her memories wiped.

I thought what would follow was the protagonist struggling through layer after layer of obstacles to restore her memories, and the two of them getting back together—or Bai Yun'er joining the protagonist's camp and boosting his strength.

What's speechless is that even by the ending they never wrote about Bai Yun'er recovering her memories. The middle is also weird: this person lost her memory, but not completely. Every time the protagonist is in danger she still jumps out to sacrifice herself to save him. It feels like she's the female lead, but then why does she have no screen time later, not even a single sentence of explanation? Only years later she comes back, the protagonist goes to pick her up at the plane (spaceship), she says "I'm back"... and then it's the ending. That's the ending...

So I think Bai Yun'er is the most regrettable character in the whole story. She's clearly the female lead, yet she inexplicably loses a huge amount of screen time.

The plot is melodramatic, and the ending is incomplete too.

A few bosses

This novel has several major bosses

• The Heteromorph King Muye, who runs through the early, middle, and late stages
• The mysterious families that only gradually surface in the mid-game
• Later a Zombie King also pops up, to raise the difficulty for the protagonist I guess

When these bosses first appear they're all one-shotting the sky, the earth, and the air. Especially the Heteromorph King and Zombie King brothers: one of them assassinates Chu Han, Bai Yun'er comes to protect him with her life, and those two beat Bai Yun'er into a cripple. If Chu Han hadn't finished healing and come out early, Bai Yun'er would have died in that wave.

The mysterious families are even more superhumanly strong. Bai Yun'er is also from a mysterious family, with such formidable power, and she only has half the bloodline of one of the mysterious families, the Bai family. These mysterious families are this strong, yet they're constrained by the Sanctioner, and the Sanctioner turns out to be an ordinary person with almost no combat power—and this person just happens to be He Feng, a subordinate of the protagonist Chu Han...

The novel describes the Sanctioner as incredibly powerful, but then the previous-generation Sanctioner (He Feng's dad) gets one-shot by the Heteromorph King and Zombie King. Of course this was instigated by the mysterious families.

Later when the mysterious families gather together to cause trouble, He Feng also shows up on the scene, but has zero deterrent power. So even though earlier it was written how much the mysterious families feared this Sanctioner, later there's no manifestation of that at all, and it even makes the Sanctioner look like comic relief.

A character designed to maintain the balance between the mysterious families and humanity turns out to be this useless. This plot clearly doesn't quite add up.

Then these invincible mysterious families, when the protagonist levels up to rank 8 or 9 (max rank is 10), get half of them taken out, and when the protagonist comes back after ranking up to 10, he one-shots all the villains among the mysterious families in one go...

The mysterious families

As mentioned above, the protagonist wiped out all the villains, so the remaining mysterious families are all his supporters, and can also be counted as part of his faction.

Yet with so much powerful combat strength, and with Sanctioner He Feng (the protagonist's military advisor, who is capable) personally leading training for so long, can they show a bit of usefulness? The protagonist one-shots all the villains, the threats on Earth (heteromorphs, zombies) are all resolved, so what's the use of these remaining people? The book says these are aliens, so can they go open up outer space or something?

---

I heard that later while writing this novel the author had a depression episode, taking time off day after day. Being able to finish it at all was already a blessing in misfortune, so there's no need to be too harsh. Reading novels is just for fun; if you want to be serious, go study the classics.

Highlights

I've roasted quite a few things...

So the question is, if this book is this bad, why did I even read it?

I find it strange too, but I'm just interested in this type of book.

The reason, if you get down to it, is that this type of novel all follows roughly the same formula: the protagonist keeps grinding monsters and leveling up, developing a faction, and finally successfully challenges the boss and beats the game.

Doesn't that sound familiar?

Isn't that just a character-raising game?

Got it. So the part I like is this "raising game" process.

In this novel, the protagonist builds a base and an army, recruits talent, develops technology; in the army he also trains three teams with very different styles, plus various intelligence organizations. Although you can't think too hard about the logic, it's still pretty satisfying when you just turn your brain off and read. That's where power fantasy brings people joy~

Recast from scratch

There's often this kind of talk online, "you can you up, no can no bibi"

Meaning people who can't make a refrigerator aren't allowed to say the fridge doesn't cool well.

I haven't written novels, but if we're talking about how this novel should be changed, my suggestion is: recast it from scratch.

Let me first say this is not meant as an offense to the original author. I'm a programmer, looking at it with a STEM mindset. If you compare a work to a software project, then there's a consensus in the programmer world: better to refactor than to touch a mountain of shit code.

So following this line of thought, how to make this novel's plot complete and fix the bugs in the logic—the only way is to refactor.

Keep the main plotline, rewrite the whole story. That way you can improve this novel's readability at the smallest cost.

For example, I'd fill these holes

The female leads

This novel has four female leads, but the plot drags, the romance development is abrupt, and there's no follow-up explanation.

So there are two options

• Declutter: cut a few, keep only the number-one female lead
• Flesh out the related plots according to weight

If you pick the first, then it would definitely be keeping only the female lead Bai Yun'er. Thinking about it, the other three don't seem that necessary. They don't have much screen time. To put it somewhat utilitarianly, they don't help the protagonist much (except Bu Sha helped the protagonist heal once, but he could recover even without the healing). Deleting the other three wouldn't affect plot completeness much.

Put another way, the other three don't invade the core logic much and can be streamlined away.

If you pick the second, you'd have to spend more ink describing each female lead's development. That's also fine. The book has a lot of text describing battles, which happens to be written pretty poorly. That part can be skipped and replaced with descriptions of the protagonist spending time with each female lead.

I personally lean toward the first. There's a lot that can be added for female lead Bai Yun'er. Since they designed an amnesia plot, then add the male lead exhausting every method, searching for a way to restore the female lead's memories.

Before that there's also the matter of the female lead being taken away, so he'd first have to risk saving her back—or kidnapping her back, whatever—and then find a way to restore her memories. After that they deal with the mysterious families together. Perfect~

Enemies

In the protagonist's development there will definitely be many stumbling blocks and stepping stones. The book also says that in the apocalypse what you should be most wary of isn't zombies but fellow humans.

So to give the protagonist more chances to be tempered, you can raise the enemies' IQ, let the protagonist get more practice. Don't let the protagonist's army be the only outstanding one, crushing everyone—that makes everyone else look like they were forcibly dumbed down.

The Zombie King is a character suddenly added later and can be completely removed. He didn't cause much harm and got one-shot by the protagonist; it doesn't mean much. Keeping just the Heteromorph King is enough.

After the Heteromorph King's first nest is wiped out there's a kind of drifting feeling. You should increase the Heteromorph King's faction development, don't start strong and end weak. Getting one-shot by the protagonist later is boring.

Then on the mysterious families' side, it's also a case of starting strong and ending weak. To improve it, you can expand the battlefield into space. Earth is at peace, develop it well as the protagonist's home base, then the mysterious families' enemies can run to some planet in the universe, the protagonist chases after them, switch maps and keep fighting. The world-building also gets bigger, just like Swallowed Star—open up the scale~

The protagonist's faction

The protagonist's development is too smooth, and everyone is loyal to him. You can appropriately add a few traitors or moles to increase the difficulty of the protagonist's development.

But this novel's setting has the protagonist with a system that can see everyone's loyalty, so this mole is a bit hard to add in.

🆗 Ending

OK, that's it

Didn't expect I'd actually write this many words...