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Best Web Novels of all time
Best Web Novels of all time
A recommendation for the best web novels that I have the pleasure to read and love. Be it, Koreans, Japaneses or Chineses. In Order of impact, note attributing and story woven. Mild Spoilers!
Multiple POVMale ProtagonistFantasy WorldReincarnationSecond ChanceTransported to Another WorldTransmigration
13 Followers
Created: Feb 25th, 2023, Updated: Feb 25th, 2023
Created Feb 25th, 2023
Updated Feb 25th, 2023
KR (4.5)
55 Chapters Every 205.2 Day(s) 24172 Readers 319 Reviews 11-26-2017
18/20. ... more>>
The third novel that I've read that introduced me to Korean novels in general. Before reading this masterpiece, I didn't know how badly I thirsted after a morally corrupt, insane and unapologetic evil main character. One who's pretty active, plans and scheme around events. But also go out of his way to arm himself in term of power, wealth or relationship. Great cast of characters all in all. I took 2 points, one for the introduction of a system that wasn't really needed and become irrelevant later on, and another one for not having completed this story. Read on summer, 2017. Shortly after high school.
Edit : After having see furtherdown EER on my list, I remember that EER was the first korean novel that I really read, the novel being the third that I started.
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KR (4.6)
193 Chapters Every 148.4 Day(s) 8132 Readers 107 Reviews 08-25-2019
19/20. ... more>>
Oh boyyyy, This should been a perfect score or at least a 4.7-8. I remember it was a solid 4.7 for a long time. One point reduction for not having completed this masterpiece. All in all, it's second but overall, the storyline, the characters, the interactions, the challenges, everything in this novel is perfectly executed. And the icing on the cake? We have a likable, well adjusted main character! An extreme rarity in novels! They're a ton of reviews that go in deeper details why this story is a must read. I admit, I didn't have an interest or even passion for the Korean cinema or Kpop scene industry in general before reading Top Management. But oh boy, did this novel lit a love for it in me. A must read for beginner who wish to start reading web novel! Started on fall of 2018. Shortly after starting college.
Edit: The author is back after a f*cking 7 years of Hiatus! I can't f*cking believe it! Right now, I'm waiting for someone to pick back up the translation. Currently at 280 chapters. As soon as someone starts translating the latest chapters, I'm going to dive right back into this novel. Hope the re-read would be as enjoyable as my memory of the novel is. Please, don't let me down, Nostalgia-bias!
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KR (4.7)
0 Chapters Every 1895 Day(s) 4310 Readers 46 Reviews N/A
17/20. ... more>>
Honestly, I wouldn't have read this novel if not for its praise, high reviews, and the fact that it share some similarities with Top Management. I started it on 2021, at the time, I hadn't seriously read a single novel since SCOG. At least, here on NU. After a while, the subpar writing/translation, lack of characters depth, the reuse of plots, clichés and settings, made me fed-up with Light novels/Web novels. After a time, I just switched to reading stories on RR, Fiction.net, SB,SV,QQ and even starting reading fanfics.
Genius of Performing Arts High? It was the breach of fresh air in a long while that I needed. An informative, entertaining and overall pleasant read. If you told 17 years old me that I would read stories, moreover about a dude and his passion for Opera singing? And loving it? Ahahahah, I would have laughed in your face. It's a solid story, with a good pacing, a cast of endearing characters and challenging contests for the main characters and his journey for success. It's well written and translated for a Web serial novel.
Started it somewhen in the year of 2021.
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KR (4.3)
105 Chapters Every 146.5 Day(s) 23977 Readers 470 Reviews 07-09-2019
13/20. ... more>>
Ahhhhh Ro Yu-jin, you... so much potential for greatness... A great disappointment. Where to start with SCOG? I will try to make it short.
The year? 2019. Somewhen after having started reading The Novel's Extra and being well into the novel while simultaneously having noticed signs of incoming story death. Ardent and somewhat experienced novel reader, SCOG was a breath of fresh air in this sea of continuous bland Korean fantasy novels. A portal appears on Earth, or Dungeons suddenly start popping up with monsters crawling out of them, etc... Multiple Koreans have been dimensionally kidnapped, or our MC is a regressor having finished the game and being on his New Game + edition. Same themes, same executions, same clichés, sometimes same powers too (shadowy summons, necromancy, system reading abilities skills, etc...), and you guessed it! The same downfalls too. For the long-time readers here, you see what I mean. Basically fast food.
Well... SCOG while being somewhat cliché, was novel in its execution. With the start of the novel having a little twist. Its writing, storytelling style, fighting scenes, and power system/theme was, compared to the average Web novel, top-notch.
SCOG is probably the Web novel with the most spectacular power system in terms of skills. I still go back to Seol Jihu's wiki page and just read his list of skills, titles, realm, etc... and just remember his training and the adversities he had to face to attain this level. Then, I sigh in disappointment at all the incongruities present in the novel. It was little things at the start (like how Seol, a grown-ass man acted like 13 y.o boy sometimes) that spiralled into the cluster f*ck that was the battle of Tigol Fortress... I'll never forget the author for making the Parasite queen do such a big brain fart move. bit*h was about to win this sh*t while knowing that the only way for humanity to have a chance was resurrecting the world tree. But instead of doing the logical thing that even a 7-year-old kid would have pointed out to her, for the sake of plot advancement, she launched a final assault on Tigol Fortress without first making damn sure to torch the only hope of humanity... There were little inconsistencies beforehand, but that plot hole bugged me a hell lot.
At this point, I was already too much invested (financially too) to just get out of this ship (years later, I regret ever paying for the advanced chapters. It was money wasted). I had to finish this at least. The only reason SCOG is so high on my list is because of nostalgia. At the time of its release, it was the best of its genre in the site. Still a huge disappointment.
For every potential reader, just skip the side stories, it will just lower your opinion of this novel and author.
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KR (4.2)
78 Chapters Every 170.5 Day(s) 21972 Readers 398 Reviews 06-26-2018
11/20. ... more>>
The biggest f*cking disappointment of 2019 in term of novel at least for me... f*ck! A stellar start. 19/20 for the start, but... oh boy did this novel chocked, hard! Starting since the middle of the story (late stage-end of the arc Tower of Wish) to its end.
Amidst a sea of junk Koreans/Japanese isekais or transmigrated into games world/stories novels, TNE was the father of the genre transmigrated author into a story I think? At least translated. The academy arc and introduction to the story were brilliantly done. The highest point of this story was at the very beginning. At least I wasn't financially invested in this one. Small consolation.
The downfall of this one? Hmmm, a lot of things actually, all of that have been pointed in reviews that address this story's shortcomings, but for me it was probably the forced drama, martyr complex of the author/main character, and the plot advancement which was random. Random in the sense that it was convenient for the author to always start an arc by making his main character think along the line of ''For this arc, X will happen, I will need Y person for me to resolve that, and Z object thanks to C, and they will be the presence of D villain or organization''. The general lack of direction and planning of the author was the major factor of this story downfall. It was this formula, rinse and repeat. Or from time to time with the intervention of the co-author to add some spice and the vague feeling that our Main Character wasn't all-knowing. Fat load of sh*t that it did.
This is the consequence of writing a part of the story by the fly of your pant. Down the road, it generates some major plot holes. Characters became brain-dead for the sake of advancing the story, and forced drama was being shoved in our throats. I skipped a great part of this story, straight to the end. Such a huge disappointment! Still, this story at the start and towards the middle was the best I ever read after quite a long time. I was always on the edge of my seat for my daily dose of chapters. The hype was real. Huge impact at the time, but ultimately bad towards the end.
Started it right toward the end of 2018, on December 28~31.
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JP (4.8)
43 Chapters Every 35.2 Day(s) 9576 Readers 129 Reviews 04-25-2024
20/20. ... more>>
Wholesome, sweet, and short. My cold and always h**ny heart was going doku~doku at the time for this story. Pure diabetes-inducing, somewhat bittersweet toward the middle but the end, oh the end! The end was really good!
The struggle of an average person being given a second chance at life... our main character imposter syndrome when succeeding academically in the earliest phase of his new life... him trying his best to keep his grades up and vie for the top spot... him failing in the later stages as his natural academic aptitude was catching up to him...
I could empathize with the main character, feel his distress, shame and I want to say acceptance by the end of the story of the simple fact that no amount of a head start will make up for natural talent and brilliance.
This story perfectly encapsulates what would happen if an average person is given a second chance at life and decide to pursue a somewhat academic career. It was heart-breaking to watch him struggle to at least present a last challenge for his childhood friend. But this tale has a happy ending! I really like what he becomes at the end. A father, Teacher, and Lover. And I like to think that the years of competition with his childhood friend, later turned wife help shape the person that she becomes later.
Take my perfect score. Started it somewhen in 2019 I think? or 2018 maybe.
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KR (4.3)
0 Chapters Every 2000 Day(s) 30410 Readers 382 Reviews 09-13-2017
12/20. ... more>>
Well let's kick this shit, shall we?
The year? Summer of 2017, one month or so after high school graduation. A good friend of mine, we were both into mangas/animes and we were both kind of tired of shonen and its clichés. I don't remember how did it go. But while discussing the latest chapter or more like making fun of the latest shonen and isekai manga, my friend introduced me to this novel. Saying that it was the greatest thing that he ever read (that and Reincarnator, he still swears by this to this day). I laugh at his face good naturally of course. I couldn't see myself reading a book. The transition from manga/manhwa to written stories was, at the time, in my mind, unthinkable.
Still, He kept encouraging me for a long time. I must have been bored the day I started to read my first webnovel. Oh well, here we are. EER wasn't the first novel I read truthfully. No, the price goes to Oukoku e Tsuzuku Michi. What did that say of me? Ahahaha. Well, it's still the first Korean novel that I read and third novel that I started. Never finished it though (kind of). But I will go back to that.
The premise? Our MC Yu Il-Han finds himself abandoned on Earth. Alone. Left behind. How? Why? Ohhh boyyy, the chills. Everyone on Earth is a Returnee. It's all in the title. In preparation for the apocalypse (or great cataclysm as it was called in the story?), the emergence of dungeons and monsters, the entire population of the earth was transported to other worlds in order to gain experience fighting, training and thriving in the new order to come. To this day, I never saw a story (translated) that introduced this premise. Maybe there is now and I'm just out of the loop. But for me, at the time, the story was a breach of fresh air and novel.
After having been fed junk food for a long time (isekai mangas/shonen with no coherent plot or story-structure), EER was the messiah that kick started my addiction to webnovels and dungeons type novels taking place in modern day. This story raised a high bar for the expectations of Korean novel in general and Dungeon Defense just reinforced it later. I can spend hours just talking about the premise and novelty of it (for me) at the time with my friend.
It was a masterpiece.
Honestly, the translation, writing, pace, and ohhh boyyy... the fights scenes were just... muahhhh- chief kiss. The novel was a goddamn masterpiece. The usage of the system was good, the MC was Overpowered and I loved it. Ultimately, what pushed me to give up on this story were the long filler chapters and bloating text of Yu Il-Han crafting his gear. The severe lack of character interactions didn't help too. It was too much for me. Things on Earth weren't touched enough for me, too much crafting, battling, farming and grinding. At one point it was just tiring. I took a break and never came back to it.
This novel could have been rated higher at least for a note if it kept me hooked to see it till the end. Still, I can't deny the impact that it left on me. It's why it's on the list even if I didn't read more than 250 chapters. Nonetheless, a great introduction to the genre and a must if you want to start your web novel journey.
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JP (4.4)
184 Chapters Every 143.6 Day(s) 23132 Readers 210 Reviews 11-28-2022
15/20. ... more>>
The year? Somewhen in September-October 2019, at the start of my second year of college. What to say about this novel? Well to start, at this point in time, I already had an aversion for Japanese (isekai) and Chinese (cultivations ) novels. Well, To Be A Power in the Shadows is another Isekai, but this one is a satyr of the genre... to an extent. The novel was an entertaining read for me as I spent 2 straight days binging the story, staying up late at night and laughing my ass off alone in my bedroom. I don't have a lot more things to add on the story. It was good and entertaining. A really enjoyable ride of a novel.
Sometimes, it's good to read a story that doesn't take itself seriously. And at its core, this novel gives you that. Great read, still has its weakness but seeing as it's not a story about saving the world from a demon king/alien/devil race, it's alright. If I'm motivated, it will not be bad to watch the anime too.
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CN (4.3)
#9Zhui Xu
32 Chapters Every 144.6 Day(s) 1761 Readers 11 Reviews 11-13-2024
16/20. Ahhhh Angry Banana... you, beautiful bastard. I f*cking love this author work. ... more>>
Where to start? The year? 2022.
But well before even starting to read this novel, I must say Zhui Xu is a novel that I have been eyeing since 2017~2018. It was after having finished reading a whole 70+ chapters of Hidden Assassin. This author first(?) work. Hidden Assassin is one of the really, really good reincarnation stories in this site where our main character has a second chance at life since childhood. There are not a lot of novels on this platform that have this kind of premise where you follow along the development of our MC through life, in a modern day setting, from childhood to adulthood. While managing to make the story feel oddly satisfying.
Hidden Assassin was this kind of work. And from the little that I read of Zhui Xu (though the MC's second chance doesn't start in his childhood but well into adulthood and he's already engaged), it even has a better start than Hidden Assassin. The writing, translation (and I must EMPHASIZE on that), pace, and characterization are really good. Every side characters feels like breathing, real, thinking people. But unfortunately, translating this story pose a major challenge for translators. The author's use of traditional poems and style of writing is really challenging to properly convey in another language. I've been eyeing this work for 5 years or so because of the lack of translating chapters before just giving up and diving head first into it one night.
To this day, I'm still waiting for this story and hidden assassin to be picked up so that I may restart reading his works.
Edit: It's June 2024 and I'm still waiting for Zhui Xu's translation... I think I'm going to get married and have kids before I get the chance to read even a hundred chapters. Sad.
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JP (4.8)
1 Chapters Every 128 Day(s) 6178 Readers 56 Reviews 02-01-2025
18/20. ... more>>
I don't remember much of the story. I still know that it's on my list and I read it pretty much right after finishing #6. But I remember at least this much: an arranged marriage, a sick wife? An open ending? Bittersweet for me in its conclusion, but poignant story with two great protagonists, and an excellent pacing in terms of romance. I don't regret reading the novel one bit and may go back to reread it along with the alternate story which is from the point of view of the female lead.
This novel is a must if you're having a slow and lazy afternoon on a weekend day of a sunny day.
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CN (4)
56 Chapters Every 219.9 Day(s) 11822 Readers 155 Reviews 06-30-2016
12/20. ... more>>
Ahhhh. The nostalgia devil is strong in this one... Where to start?
I had to take a good 2-minute break to reminisce about this story and organize my thought while writing this. Well, I guess we can start with a trip down memory line.
The year? Summer of 2017.
But before I start to talk about this novel, I had to mention that the second novel I ever read was its cousin. Or if we can call it that. Like the 'Every masterpiece has a cheap copy' meme, My Wife is a Beautiful CEO has its pale imitation.
My cold and Elegant CEO wife.
Granted, My Wife is A Beautiful CEO isn't a masterpiece either... but you know what I mean. God of Music (Yes, I read it and yes it's for me a cheap copy even if chronologically it's debatable) for Top Management, The Editor is the Novel's extra for The Novel's Extra, and so on...
But at least, years later I can say I'm ashamed of my adolescent-ass for reading more than 400 chapters of My Cold and Elegant CEO Wife and loving the absolute sh*t of it! God, it was that cringe and bad. God, I was that cringe and bad for laughing at the MC face-slapping-s*erm joke. In my defence, it was novel and I never heard that joke before. It was a good one tho.
But I thank MYCEC for at least introducing me to MWBC. It was a solid 4.4 six~seven years ago on Novel Update. And for good reasons too. Damn, I used to swear by this novel, declaring the novel to be one the best ones I've ever read to my friend, urging him to read it too. Decrying that by comparison, MYCEC was tr*sh. A mere imitation daring to emulate what made MWBC work. And contrary to MYCEC, MWBC did have a plot. An intrigue centered around the MC, Yang Chen and his past, skills, motivations, actions, etc... It was the same for his wife and some other females lead.
The hype and adulations were real for My Wife is a Beautiful CEO. I had to stress, now it doesn't make sense for the hype that this novel had and, for a long time, been the subject of. Now, the novel rating perfectly reflects the quality of its work, in my opinion.
However, when there was less than 300 hundred chapters translated and with the platform being already at the time saturated with this genre, MWBC managed to stand out from the rest. The pace, intrigue, drama, and interpersonal relationships between the cast was really good. It was miles better than any other novels in the same genre that had the same premise.
Unfortunately, the novel took a dive in quality in later chapters. Granted again, it wasn't perfect. But for this kind of story, it was excellent at was it was doing. The MC, who was described as street smart, cautious, and I guess somewhat genre savvy in a show-but-don't-tell kind of manner throughout the story (which was another +), began to make dumb and dumber decisions which came to bite him in the ass along with everyone he cares for. Sometimes, or more like most of the time later on in the novel, he was the instigator of the conflicts erupting around him. Either by letting his d*ck lead his thought process or led or by being weirdly passive.
The constant drama surrounding the Female lead Ruoxi? didn't help either. Be it with the drama surrounding her family, the author indulging his r*pe/kidnapping fetish, or with Yang Chen's tendency to add new people into his harem without consulting his wife, which always created drama with her.
The last one was head-scratching, like I can see where the girl is coming from but at the same time... wasn't she more or less ok at the beginning(?). Can't remember too well, but it was damn annoying when suddenly, from my pov, she was raising such a big fuss about it. For the nth time. If the author thought that it was realistic for a wife to be against that (it is but then again any respecting woman irl would have divorced his ass a long time ago lmao) and we would praise him for shoving us the nth Yang Chen/Ruoxi dispute down our throat... he has another thing coming.
Ultimately, while I fell out of love with this novel- hard- I still have fond memories of it. It was a good wish-fulfilment Urban Fantasy novel and did manage to entertain me for quite some time. I even did read the MTL. Happy to see that it's completed and Kudos to Veratales translator(s) who work on this for such a long time.
P.S: I manage to remember that the novel even has fanfics of it on Webnovel. Yang Chen has been basically replaced by Naruto in the one I stumbled upon. Which just says how much the novel was/is popular. Along with Release that Witch.
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KR (4.1)
45 Chapters Every 493.8 Day(s) 10569 Readers 215 Reviews 09-07-2020
11/20. ... more>>
2022. The year I started reading this story.
Oh boy, was this story glorious. At least the first 200 chapters were. Easily 16~17/20. After a whole f*cking lot of time without my fixes of a decent/good self-serving, smarmy, conniving and unrepentant son of a bit*h of a main character, I was like a drug addict craving for his fix. RIM? It was the fix that I didn't know that I was still craving. And like a person stranded on a desert without water, I Injected this sh*t directly in my veins!
This novel had, for a time, managed to scratch a particular itch that I still had. Unfortunately, RIM quickly, but steadily took a dive in the stakes presented. Every problem that the MC and his teammates encountered along the line was easily resolved without tension. Without even taking into account the number of crazy but fiercely loyal and overpowered in status, strength, or talents, female members/allies (later haremettes) that keep falling in the MC's lap. This. This manages to kill any stakes, conflict resolution-wise that I had in the story. Later on, it furthered smothered any kind of interest that I had left in reading the novel. RIM is an excellent example of a novel with a somewhat cliché premise that started good and promising but later on, suffered from a subpar/terrible execution.
There are a ton of novels like this one on this platform, and unfortunately, RIM doesn't stand out from others.
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JP (4.3)
CN (3.6)
39 Chapters Every 381 Day(s) 6270 Readers 99 Reviews 06-02-2017
10/20. ... more>>
Well, contrary to the note attributed, I did enjoy reading this novel. It has its faults and shortcomings, of course. But it's on my list for a reason. I think a lot of veteran novel readers are going to disagree with me on that one just by taking a look at the title of this list of recommendations.
And I'm of the same opinion. It's certainly not worthy of even being in the top 100 of best Chinese web novels. Yet this novel left a huge impact on me and my reading experience.
Let's start it, shall we? I think that after a certain milestone, we're sometimes well past the point of caring too much about the kind of material that we spend our time reading, even knowing that the novel is probably tr*sh or painfully average, we still keep reading it. Why? Because it's sometimes good to just shut your brain and read a novel. You can still be engrossed by it despite its numerous faults.
This is my case with I Have a Mansion in the Post-apocalyptic World.
The premise of the novel, again at the time for me, was novel. For really long-time dwellers of this site, I am sure there weren't a lot of novels translated with this premise. It was written in 2014? I started reading this somewhere in 2018 after I think Top Management. A quick re-read for a refresh and it's even worse than I remember. Logic wise. There is not really a concrete worldbuilding, and the storytelling is all over the place. And yet...
Yet, I still reminisce fondly while thinking of this novel. Again that's why it's on this list. It's a wish fulfilment. It started with our MC Yang/Jiang Chen(?) obtaining a device that allowed him to be transported to an alternate future in which a nuclear war had happened. With hindsight, if the displacement was permanent, the story would have been even more interesting I think. At least in terms of challenges and stakes presented it would have. But I guess it'd have been harder for the author to explore. He already did a bad job with the post-apocalyptic logic side of the novel, and to be honest, it's also the case for the present/modern day side of it. However, it was this side of the story that I loved the most.
Again, I didn't take this novel too seriously and decided to read it as novels in general with this kind of premise were intended to be read for... wish fulfilment. I love the escalation of wealth and prestige that the MC achieved throughout the story. I love the business building and management side of the novel. I had a lot of fun reading through an arc in the post-apocalyptic future where he vanquished some great adversary, grew his fame, his army, and his standing, to later on use his assets to further develop his company in the present. Now that I'm saying this. It was pretty much this formula, rinse and repeat.
Of course, there were a lot of annoying and dreadful to-read arcs which I skipped. Most were from the post-apocalyptic side I remember. The one immediately jumping to my mind, even several years later, is the arc about some kind of simulation(?) A simulated world à-la Sword Art On line Alicerization or something. The focus of the arc was definitely about one of the female leads and I think later join our MC's harem.
Anyways, the story has its shortcomings but I was still from time to time, reading this novel till around the time COVID-19 started to be a thing. I roughly read 600~ chapters of this. In terms of chapters read, it's probably in the top 3 of novels I read the most. And If I still can remember the name of the main character (kind of), after all these years, then in my book, it did leave a great impact.
I used to say back then that the story was being carried by the MC, and for a wish fulfilment novel? It's kind of a good achievement.
P.S: My friend also has this tr*sh/bellow average lengthy novel that he stuck through the year and kept reading until a certain time. It has like more than 7000 chapters and it was call something like, To be a farmer in another world? or Bringing farming method into another world? Something like that, it's Chinese and every time we talk novel, we always go back to our respective péché mignon.
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