Webnovels may be a concept foreign to Westerners, but as Asian media becomes more and more mainstream amongst Western culture there’s been an increasing presence online of webnovels.
You might start seeing strange and long titles online like The Most Powerful Characters in the World Are Obsessed With Me and The Symbiotic Relationship Between the Rabbit and the Black Panther.
Yes, those are real titles. In which case, what are webnovels?
What are they?
It’s about as simple as its name. A webnovel is only a story that has been published online rather than in a traditional physical format. If eventually the book does get licensed for physical publishing, they are generally still regarded as “webnovels” due to how they were initially published.
Although it is not very common to see an American webnovel outside of RoyalRoad (although there’s Radish…), there are many being published in East Asia at an astronomical rate. While some are paid, others are free, and are generally released chapter by chapter once a week.
Korean, Chinese, and Japanese webnovels are especially popular with many works inspiring live-action adaptions, animes, and comics. Many novels follow a common setting or trope and have different names that are popularly used to describe as such, such as:
- Wǔxiá (武侠) – Stories containing martial arts
- Xīanxiá (仙侠) – Stories containing immortal beings
- Rofan (로판) – Short for Romance Fantasy
Reincarnation, also known as isekai (異世界) – Stories where the main character is reborn in another world
Otome isekai (乙女異世界) – A sub-genre of isekai targeted towards females wherein there’s a lot of romance, drama, and fights for the throne.
Most webnovels seem to follow a similar theme or trope with some being described as gǒuxiě (狗血), or dog blood, meaning a story that is overly cliched and dramatic in a bad way.
Fans online affectionately call the truck that runs into the main character before being reincarnated in many stories “truck-kun” (Japanese honorific).
Or that one castle model that appears in the background of so many manhwas (Korean comics), “castle-nim” (Korean honorific).
They are not light novels. Light novels are published physically and generally only come from Japan.
Where can I read them?
The best way to find webnovels to read legally would be through publishers that have officially licensed an English translation. There are quite a few on Amazon with some popular titles being Heaven Official’s Blessing, The Husky and His White Cat Shizun, and Guardian.
All three novels and more can now also be found at bookstores like Barnes & Noble. These are purchased by the volume and not by the chapter sensibly.
Another platform to read webnovels on is Tapas.io, and unless the whole work has been translated, then this one will be a chapter a week. It is not uncommon for webnovels to reach hundreds of chapters so it’s a long-time commitment.
You can earn free coins on Tapas or wait for chapters to unlock but it’s most likely that you’ll have to spend money, especially as you begin to read more and more novels. Other websites like TappyToon, Wuxiaworld, J-Novel Club, Webnovel.com, and YenPress, feature a similar premise.
One very popular novel, Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, is an action fantasy with a similar concept of an isekai story (where a character is transported or reincarnated into another world) as a protagonist who finds himself stuck in the very novel he’s been reading.
A world that’s facing an apocalypse.
It’s part of what’s considered the “Holy Trinity” between it and two other novels: Trash of the Count’s Family and The S-Classes That I Raised.
Ize Press is publishing an English translation of this widely acclaimed novel and webtoon (a comic that’s been published by the company WEBTOON) this summer with a live-action movie, and animated show (at some point in the future) to follow.
Check it out!
Other recommendations for webnovels
I’ll provide only very brief descriptions as the synopses for these stories aren’t usually very detailed and the plots are difficult to describe without it being too long.
So if something catches your eye, look up reviews online.
For webnovels that are currently popular I would suggest trying (or waiting for a translation which is something you’ll get very used to if you get into reading webnovels):
Got Dropped Into a Ghost Story, Still Gotta Work – A story on transmigration (like reincarnation, but where the person keeps their original “body” and is just transported to another world) where the genre of the fictional story is horror! As suggested by the title, he still has to work.
SSS Class Suicide Hunter – Has a very good reputation within the genre of stories that specialize in game-ranking systems. It’s a bit hard to explain, but imagine the way some video games operate with skills, items, levels, enemies, and whatnot, and apply that to a real-life action setting. The main character has to die in order to use his skill.
Lord of the Mysteries – This is a reincarnation story (as many are) set in a Victorian era with magic. It has a darker tone, and is a very, very long novel.
The Villainess Lives Twice – A woman who had been betrayed in her past life and decides to play on the team of her previous enemy the second time around. This novel uses the “regression” trope where the main character goes back in time, generally within an alternate Western historical setting. This particular story contains a heavy political tone, but does also include romance.
A Stepmother’s Marchen – Also regression. This one focuses a lot on the relationships between family members as a young girl goes back in time and tries to improve the situation between her and her step-children who are only two years younger than she.
Reading with Typecast
Typecast offers an audiobook recorder tool with AI text-to-speech capabilities that, with the ease of having access to the entire text online of webnovels, is a perfect tool for any reader.
By inputting the text and selecting whichever voice you’d prefer to narrate you can listen to an audiobook narration of your favorite webnovels and enhance the reading experience.
