Shifting Tides

Painting the Mists, Book 7

By: Patrick Laplante

Narrated by: Adam Verner

Not all wounds heal. Some scars, you keep forever.

Cha Ming has returned from Jade Moon Planet stronger than ever. The Monkey King is back. Huxian’s demon collection is up an ugly toad. They even took back an entire garden. But life is far from perfect.

Yu Wen, the love of Cha Ming’s life, is dead. He has vowed to find her in the cycle of reincarnation. To do that, he must journey to Haijing City to heal his core. Little does he know that the ancient underwater empire is a linchpin in the struggle between angels and devils.

Meanwhile, Wang Jun has returned from his long exile. His influence in Gold Leaf City has waned. He must rebuild it to fight his corrupted family. It could cost him everything; even his soul.

©2019 Patrick G. Laplante (P)2020 Podium Audio

a book with true struggle

I'm a huge cultivation fan. I enjoy both reading and writing about it. So far, with this series, I'm very impressed.

I've gotten pretty annoyed in the past by main characters that find fortuitous encounters at every turn and seem to vastly overwhelm the antagonists.

Cha Ming has had his cultivation crippled, he's been made a slave among other things and I'm sure there'll be so much more to come. This book is a martial arts equivalent to The Sword of Truth series. The main character has to struggle and find meaning in his existence. He sees the many injustices in his reality and sets out to make them right. He isn't doing all that he does for himself, but for those around him. It also seems that every action he takes has a good and bad reactions to those around him. If I were to put a word to it, I'd like to say that this author is making full use of karma in this series.

If you want a series that is straight forward in its meaning. One that the protagonist will effortlessly stand atop the world of cultivation while others bow their unworthy heads, go read more books on Webnovel. But if you want a series that has a protagonist who builds up his friends and stands on equal footing, one that loses everything just to find a small glimmer of hope in order to come out alive, this is it guys.

Depends on what you're here for

I loved this book, and the series. If you're listening simply for the cultivation ans fights then sure this may not be your thing. If you're like me however and get excited about the story, the struggle of the characters, their perseverance, the beautiful writing and how it can be relatable to what we go through and deal with in our everyday lives, this was art, beautiful.

Another good one

I've enjoyed this series a lot, and I wasn't disappointed by this book. I've enjoyed seeing the world and the characters grow.

Wash, rinse, repeat… starting to drag

The story is beginning to become quite repetitious, in same cases literally word for word. This installation was overly wordy and could have been a short story in the collection for all the movement we got through most of the book. Hopefully the next book doesn’t drag as much and isn’t so repetitious of themes that have already played out in previous books.

its good after the prolog.

the prolog is going to has well has rotting food sealed in a unplugged freezer the prolog was garbage imo. the book continues the trend of loosing more then winning like some kind of crutch the author leans on to build tension though the ending doesn't feel pyrrhic like the last books at the end.

The author hates his MC

The MC is never okay. Always either crippled, handicapped, or just overpowers for reasons. There is a massive inconsistency in how different characters develop in the same world. It will be an arduous journey that shows how hard it is for the MC while a casual thing for villains and other characters. Just disgusting. And no matter what he does or how powerful he gets as soon as any worthwhile bad guy shows up, he’s worthless. It’s like the MC is never complete and 7 books in, that’s been old. Huxian is kind of a dick too. It is badly excused and contradicted. Like he is downright villainous sometimes but it will be discussed like it's some little cute funny thing he is doing. What happened to the karmic tie he had with the MC? Guess he could just tell him to do all the bad things he just ‘need him too’ and it'd not effect him? Oh yeah, he does do that and it has no effect on Cha Ming.

But what sucks the most is the author’s addiction to disappointing us and the MC. He will even set rules the a transcendent realm that screw him and then dismissed the logic when it would work in there favor. And Jo Lee’s plot armor.is insane. Why dies this author just love dumping in his MC? It just gets annoying after awhile.

Did you forget the entire story of the last 6 books!

You spent 6 book worth establishing a universe then in this dumb ass book. You magically reincarnate the main villain of the third book, then he has the ability to magically Control fate exactly as he sees fit!?!? This guy died in this life time!!! Your universe doesn’t allow this!!! And can I just say I agree with you on book 5 time travel shit sucks!!! Why the hell did you put this in the six book! I’ll buy then seven book but if you don’t fix this bull shit, I’ll never read your books again.

crappy prologue.

the main character is a great pic yourself up by your bootstraps type of dude and his friend is pure capitalist. prologue makes fun of these types of people.

A damn shame

I really really love this series but by god this book is annoying. I swear this book is mostly failure and the logic that was in the old books is replaced with the author constantly pushing the plot forward with the main villain who has horribly inconsistent powers that are BEYOND over powered. I can not fathom why people who have powers like the main villain do not rule over most of the multiverse because the amount of bull the main villain pulls is just disgusting and unrealistic even for wuxia novels. Also the villain is just that classic bad guy character that somehow always escapes right before getting injured or killed.

I also HATE how the author has left our MC crippled for so long, it feels like the author needed Cha ming to not be too strong and instead of giving us stronger threats the author just decided to make progress tedious, slow and rather boring. Also failure after failure at the hands of a boring villian who somehow always stays on par with Cha ming AND has overpowered "Karma" abilities, because that makes sense.

All together I give this book 3.5 stars when I have given almost all the other books 5 stars I really hope this kind of writing is left behind after this book.

Another bad book in the series

This book contains failure after failure. MC always fails. Villain from the first book always wins somehow. MC still crippled. This book is as bad as the third book. Author fails again; guess he loves the underdog.