4.25 stars. Fascinating concept.
I’m currently reading the second book of a series called “The Jester of Apocalypse”.
In the beginning, the MC is the son of a sect leader who refuses to do anything but read books. He doesn’t train or become a cultivator. He eventually is trapped by a cursed book.
Our MC is trapped in a type of hell. He wakes up in a desolated world, and is chased by a demon. The demon kills him, and his world restarts. Again, and again, and again. He’s not gaining any skills or experience from these fights at first. He’s not getting stronger. He’s living the same “day” over and over, like Groundhog Day.
(In the movie Groundhog Day, the movie never states it, but some people estimate that Bill Murray’s character lives 30 to 40 years in this “repeated day” state. He goes through a full range of reactions, and eventually becomes friends with everyone in the whole town, learning a new language, learning piano, etc. It must have been some torture to live the same day over and over again for 40 years.)
In this book, “The Jester of Apocalypse”, our MC goes much longer than that in this repeated day, being chased by this demon that he cannot beat and eventually dies of hunger or thirst even if he successfully avoids them. There appears to be no escape.
But of course, he does learn how to avoid the demon, and eventually how to defeat the demon. But then, level 2 – two demons. The nightmare continues.
So he dies again and restarts. And endless series of deaths. Hundreds, thousands, and who knows… more?
It’s a fascinating concept.
The trouble I guess is that he cannot truly advance in any way. He cannot get stronger. He cannot develop some type of magic system like qi or spells. But this forces him to perfect the basics. This forces him to get absolutely flawless technique up to the point where he dies of hunger (a few days at best). Infinite practice at the techniques but unable to retain anything beyond a couple of days of gains.
But even just a few days of this puts him on par with the most powerful cultivators back where he came from. If he can just get back there…
Of course, being stuck in an infinite time loop can make one a bit crazy. (I’m surprised Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day wasn’t completely mentally insane at the end.)
So I read the first book, and am coming to the end of the second. I will say, there’s something unique about it.
The narration is interesting. At times, a demon needs to speak. And the narrator makes the voice sound like nails being drawn against a chalkboard.
The book takes some interesting twists and turns, too. The MC doesn’t go straight from being a good guy, to being a hero. In fact, the MC is often not a good guy. He struggles with it. And by the end of the second book, it’s still not clear where on the spectrum of good to evil he will land. The character is not one note.
