I just caught up on the latest arc of 'My Magical Dungeon is a Real-Estate Empire' and wow, the last chapter really threw a curveball. The hero summoned a literal city planner from modern-day Tokyo to help him manage his labyrinth, and now there's a whole subplot about zoning disputes with the local dragon council. It's absurd but weirdly gripping.
I'm mostly here for the harem dynamics though, and the author finally gave the elf archer some serious backstory. Turns out her cold exterior stems from a failed arranged marriage to a noble from a rival forest kingdom. Feels a bit tacked-on, but it explains her hostility towards the new half-demon merchant girl who just showed up. The power scaling is getting out of hand, but I'm too invested to stop now.
I’m just reading the manhwa on Tapas, for the novel translation of ‘Pick Me Up’ it’s too fragmented and inconsistent for me to really care about right now. (That being said, I believe it is currently ahead of the comic, although it’s difficult for me to find individual English chapters of it and it would require far more effort on my part to read the novel rather than the manhwa). The art really adds to the gacha summoning scenes, so that’s a major draw for me to just read the manhwa.
I’ve kind of built a system for finding new RC novel releases over time. I bookmark Webnovel’s “New Releases” and Wuxiaworld’s “New Stories” pages, since they get updated regularly. Sometimes the “New Releases” page will even feature some trending content or newly completed translations, so I try to check that page every day or so too. There are a few Twitter translators of RC novels that I follow, and they’ll usually post about upcoming projects and then link to new chapters as they’re released.
For even more books to read, I look for RC Novel Facebook groups and follow some of the pages. Then, I also look at some of the Goodreads lists for Newly Translated RC Novels and Upcoming Releases in Fantasy. I’ve found some real gems when people add new titles to these lists, written by authors that I’d never heard of before.
I also keep an eye out for crowdfunding projects on Kickstarter (for example, it was how I found out about the translation of ‘Lord of the Mysteries’ early on). In general, I try to combine the official resources for new releases, the information I get from social media and the input I get from the community, in order to be as up-to-date as possible and always have something new to read.
The title of the ‘fastest’ novel app actually refers to a specific genre and the biggest platforms for that genre. Chinese cultivation novels are published on Webnovel and the aggregators, while Korean romance novels are published on Manta and on reading platforms such as Tappytoon, etc. There is no king of the novel apps, the platforms specialize.
Asking for the fastest novel app is like asking for the fastest vehicle to get somewhere. A scooter would be the best for a short city commute, a plane for a long cross-country road trip. So, we need to specify the terrain, man.
I’m waiting for an audio book version of this to be released in English. Apparently, there is a full Korean audio book version out now. No doubt the English publisher will commission a translation and a reading of this once the text version has been completed. I only read on my commute, so everything I read is in audio book form. I check Audible and the other major audio book platforms from time to time to see if this has been released yet. It hasn’t. A very fun story to be read well by a good narrator in audio book format, so fingers crossed that it will get a full English audio book version.