Review: Beware of Chicken 2

Beware of Chicken 2 by CasualFarmer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

CasualFarmer can write a cozy, humourous cultivation novel, for sure, even if the editing does need another pass and the pacing at the beginning and end could do with some adjustment.

This is a big book, and it needs to be in order to fit all the viewpoints from the ever-multiplying cast. An ensemble cast with multiple viewpoints is hard to do, and the author manages it well, although having so many different storylines to wrap up does land him with the Return of the King problem: too many endings that seem to go on just a bit too long. I also felt that the potential conflict of the senior cultivator looking for Jin Rou, the central character in the ensemble cast, could have been introduced slightly earlier - say, by 25% rather than 30% of the way through. The first 30% is an ambling slice-of-life, which is fine, but not as interesting as it becomes once there's a threat (which the main characters are unaware of) to worry about. Apart from that, I felt the plot was well handled; it's not a highly plotty book, being more about the development of the characters, but you need a certain minimum amount of plot to show that development, and what plot there is unfolds at the pace it needs to.

As I noted, it's long, and so the fact that there are about 70 errors in it (that I noticed) makes it only average in terms of needing editing, proportionately. If anything, it's a bit better in this regard than the first book, though there are still a good few excess coordinate commas, occasional problems with dialog punctuation (especially at the end, when we get several instances of the issue that I saw a lot of in the first book, where the dialog tag is punctuated as a separate sentence), and a sample platter of other common issues: dangling modifiers, missing past perfect, noun/verb agreement, fumbled phrasing, homonym errors, apostrophe placement, and simple uncaught typos. Still, they're no more frequent than in a lot of other books these days, and from what I can tell, a good deal better than most other books in this genre, which are frankly inept.

What I liked a lot was that the characters are good-hearted people, including the ones who are animals, even the arrogant ones. They mostly have some kind of significant progression during the book, too, and that progression is different for each of them. The characters are distinct; they have different voices and different personalities and different conflicts and aspirations and abilities, and you'd never confuse one of them for another. I can think of at least one Hugo-winning author who could take lessons from this book in writing well-defined characters.

Also, the determined aversion of the harem trope is great; it always makes me happy to see a dedicated monogamist in fiction.

Overall, a satisfying experience, and I look forward to Book 3.

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