Chugong’s Solo Leveling is an unabashed power-scaling fantasy romp where the narrative borrows heavily from videogames and RPGs. If that floats your boat, then you might really enjoy this.
Summary
(edited down from Wikipedia)
In a world where hunters – human warriors who possess supernatural abilities – battle deadly monsters…a notoriously weak hunter named Sung Jin-woo finds himself in a seemingly endless struggle for survival. One day, after narrowly surviving an overwhelmingly powerful and rare double dungeon that nearly wipes out his entire party, a mysterious program called The System chooses him as its sole player and in turn, gives him the unique ability to level up. Jin-woo then sets out on a journey as he fights against all kinds of enemies, both man and monster, to discover the secrets of the dungeons and the true source of his powers.
Content Warnings
Mostly just fantasy violence and fantasy takes on souls, demons, gods, and such. Minor dips into femicide, child abuse, and suicide.
Review [Very Minor Spoilers, Where Necessary]
One of the oddities of heroic narratives is that the hero will [very likely] win. The hero might suffer loses, and likely will suffer loses, because those shape the glory of the victory. They let us know what is at stake.
It is the same way that we read mystery fiction to see the detective solve the case and romance fiction to see the couple get together. Not guaranteed, especially for certain ironic deconstructions, just very likely.
You would not be too far off the mark to extend this principle and say the trick being played is not whether the writer can solve the story to give a victory to the hero but whether the writer can solve the story to make the reader think the hero might fail. We, the reader, get to suspend disbelief and pretend that we aren’t invested precisely because we know the rough shape of the ending.
Chugong very rarely cares about this trick. Volume after volume, challenge after challenge, Jinwoo1 will win despite the losses and the trials and Chugong is tired of pretending otherwise. There are only a few bits — mostly in the first volume and the last two volumes — where Jinwoo feels like he might honestly (and does) suffer consequences. Neither time precisely dwells but these are highlights. Enough fragility that we, as everyday schlubs flipping through the story on a lunchbreak, might feel like a part of the story. The rest of the time, Jinwoo is simply ahead of the curve in every conceivable way.
This is all to say that Solo Leveling is an unabashed power-scaling fantasy romp. You read it not because you want to be tricked into thinking that Jinwoo can fail, not really, but because you want to see him punch the concept of failure in its smirking face. With that idea in mind, the series is a huge amount of fun. He will fight dragons, liches, death knights, and all sorts of magic beasts and he will grow and get and stronger. Men will love him. Women will want him. Authorities will beg him for help.
It’s delightful in the same way a huge bowl of ice cream is delightful. Too much but tasty.
Characters that are not Jinwoo are mostly in existence to highlight Jinwoo. There are exceptions but it would have been nice to have seen stronger side characters (both in-narrative and in narrative structure). It’s not Group Party Leveling, after all. This is Jinwoo’s story. It is a flaw, though, and one that traps the story in its own loop. More time could be spent building up others. You don’t write a story about saving the world unless you make the world worth saving. The “Side Story” bonus chapters in Volume 8 do a better job than the other seven in making us understand and properly feel for the other people around Jinwoo’s sphere of influence.
The other major flaw, maybe the major flaw is that Jinwoo is at best a hazy character-type across a series of vignettes with poor continuity of self. He’s nervous at times; loves his mother and sister; ok at school; hardworking; kind of an ass; friendly enough; stand-offish; a bit slow on the uptake; attractive; of average looks; etc. He is the embodiment of both the average-everyman and also said average-everyman’s fantasy life. Chugong wants him to be both a likeable main character but also someone above the cares of daily consequence: a Marvel and DC hero at the same time. Jinwoo’s a horoscope reading: throw enough vague sentences at a wall and the believer will pick out the few that seem to fit.
It is again shocking just how much better the bonus chapters are at telling this more complete story of Jinwoo, despite being somewhat separated from the main narrative. I’d like to see Chugong use that mode to retell the whole story. Jinwoo handles this sort of clash pretty well as a character. When he is most open and dealing with himself and other people: this is where he feels most like the proper super-hero he was meant to be.
It could still be unabashed power fantasy. That part was fun.
I’m full enough for now of the bowl of ice cream, though. I need to read something with someone a bit more fragile for at least my next couple of reads.
- Note, some sources hyphenate his name to Jin-{W|w}oo, the version I read from Yen Press had it as a single, non-hyphenated word: Jinwoo. I’ll stick to that. ↩︎