Swallowed Star Review
Swallowed Star is yet another I Eat Tomatoes (IET for short) xianxia novel series. This series is different from his others due to it being based more on science fiction than his typical fantasy which I find to be a nice change.
Swallowed Star is about Luo Feng, a young high schooler wanting to become a Fighter in the year of 2056. Becoming a Fighter is no ordinary task, they are the elite of the human species and they protect humanity from extinction by the monsters. In 2015 an RR virus came into being, it was so deadly that it killed 2 billion humans, spread to animals and caused mutations among all the survivors. These mutations made humans stronger, faster, smarter alongside a host of other changes, unfortunately, the same thing happened with the animals and it turned them into monsters.
In a 6-year period that lasted until 2021, the Grand Nirvana as it was called began when humanity was attacked by waves of monsters that were virtually immune to all conventional weaponry, the world’s nations collapsed, billions of humans perished with only America, European Union, India, China, and Russia being able to survive long enough to protect themselves in gigantic, armored cities. During this time period is when the Fighter was born, humans capable of going toe to toe with the monsters and defeating them.
The next 35 years an uneasy balance began to exist between Humanity and the Monsters. Human Fighters protect their cities and hunt the monsters, the monsters, in turn, fight each other and hunt the Fighters but all that is about the change. The monsters are continuing to evolve, getting stronger faster than humanity can and the balance is starting to tip. Luo Feng will become a fighter at the heart of this battle, the battle to save humanity from extinction.
Swallowed Star is IET’s attempt at a more mature, science fiction based xianxia novel and for the most part I think that he was successful. The only real problem with the series is that he also managed to blunt what he is best at, for example, his training sequences in this series are not as good as his other series like Coiling Dragon, Desolate Era, etc. This results in a story that doesn’t have as much excitement or anticipation that his best stories have. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Swallowed Star is a good series and is well worth the read but it just won’t reach the heights you would expect from an IET series.
Definitely read it, I don’t think you will be disappointed.