Reborn as a Demonic Tree

As of the time of writing this review, I have read all available chapters (55 chapters or so).

Blurb

Ashlock awoke in the courtyard of a demonic sect… as a tree.

A tree that eats people.

And one that grows stronger over time due to a daily sign-in system and cultivation.

Thoughts

I picked up this serial very early on when it was absolutely breaking records on Rising Stars. 10k followers in under a month, absolutely insane. I also did the typography on the cover you see (for free, no stakes in this review, I promise). In fact, Demon Tree (or should it be ‘RaaDT’) dominated Rising Stars so thoroughly I believe Kana legitimately changed the RR algorithm in response. Early reviews are (apparently, I don’t have a RR series myself) no longer as OP at getting you to the top on day one.

But fun algorithms aside, why did the series take off? What tropes did it tick off?

• Blank Slate MC: Chapter one and Ashlock is a two-year-old sapling. There’s no pointless intro chapters about a life on Earth that’s just fluff (looking at you Unbound), we get right into it. Instead, being reborn from Earth is just a way the author can easily use Earth-bound analogies and phrases without it being completely narrative-breaking.
• Simple System: It’s a daily sign in system. You get a point a day, plus points for sacrifices (ie things the tree eats), and Ashlock can bank them up to get better rewards. This system is unlocked in Chapter one. Again, no waiting around.
• Cultivation tropes: We’re all familiar with face and Qi and cultivation stages. With them as the background system (the daily sign in is unique to Ashlock), we don’t have to spend tons of time figuring out how the world works, we can use prior works to do the heavy lifting. Notice the theme here? You get straight into it.
• Always Be Cliffing: Xkarnation has really followed the playbook well on this. Each chapter ends with a tease (and I’ll only do the first few chapters to keep spoilers to the “obviously that was going to happen” category)
  • Chapter one, Ashlock unlocks the sign in system. What will it give him?
  • Chapter two: Ashlock meditates system to get to the next realm. What will that stage grant him?
  • Chapter three: Ashlock uses his banked points to get [redacted]. I wonder what it will do?
• Randomisation: Cliffs work best when you can’t guess the outcome. With the daily sign in system, the reward is entirely random, which is an enticing way to make you turn the page. Imagine if instead we were talking about the MC from An Outcast In Another World. The system is stats, classes and skills, like many, and the MC focuses on vitality, and unlocks a regeneration ability early on. The MC reaches a milestone on vitality, and their Regeneration I ability upgrades to Regeneration II. And then III. It’s much harder to build suspense and encourage readers to turn the page when the upgrade pathway is obvious. The sign in system ensures every reward is something you want to turn the page and find out about.

So these are all the things done ‘right’ to get that huge following, and if that sounds like a fun read to you, amazing!

Let’s talk about the things that didn’t work as well.

• Interludes: From the horse’s mouth, Xkarnation said (discord) that every single interlude he did from either the perspective of Stella or Diana saw a marked drop in reader retention. People read the story for the skills, demon tree shenanigans, and daily sign in. Adding perspectives from other characters, while allowing him to flesh out the plot and world more, wasn’t something that resonated with readers who just wanted MORE TREE.
• Odd Writing Choices: This one is my opinion, not the author’s. Because of how much of Demon Tree is from the perspective of a tree that doesn’t have the ability to speak, the author inverted the normal style for dialogue and inner thought. So characters speaking are italicised, and Ashlock thinking is not. For me, jarring. And for chapters when there are lots of people speaking, harder to read. I can confirm, however, this is all getting fixed for the Amazon release in the works.
• Prose: This one is 100% just me. The number of serials which use Earth-human reincarnation to describe scenes is too damn high. I don’t want to read about architecture that’s “Chinese-style”. I don’t want information from the world injected via Earth bound memories, a la “Ashlock thought back to the stories he read back on Earth and realized cultivators were usually rare.” These things always take me out of the world being constructed, it doesn’t matter if it’s explained by the MC having Earth-bound memories or not. This serial doesn’t abuse this one too much, compared to many of the other ones I’ve read, to be fair.

So, technical things aside, how’s the plot? It’s still early days for the serial, so it’s hard to tell. You know of a Beast Tide coming soon, and see the sects warring with each other. Ultimately, those things are in the background right now, and will probably take another hundred or two hundred pages to become more immediate problems. This is fine, because it means more time with Ashlock, but I feel like the pace will have to pick up soon to stop the story becoming Ashlock just unlocking skills and abilities with no real stakes. Ashlock is gaining some more agency in the world via his abilities and his spatial magic, and I’m expecting things to go haywire prettttty soon, because Ashlock is deliberately stirring up the sects and making them go for each other’s throats. I’m keen to see how Ashlock benefits in all of this, and very keen to read about the impending beast tide and how Ashlock, Stella, and Diana will survive the horde. Update: an old monster has just popped in and set the scene, I’m very keen to see where this goes!

All in all, it’s a fun popcorn read that leans heavily into smacking those dopamine reward centres in our brains, and for me was a perfect thing to read in between larger existing series that took a lot more mental effort to digest.