I recently had the opportunity to listen to the Engligh translation audiobook of the Korean webnovel Solo Levelling, written by Chugong. I’ve looked into the series a little more and I’m really excited about it now.
The Audio
My first exposure to Solo Leveling was through an audiobook ARC that I got through Netgalley. The story sounded interesting and I was curious about a Korean web novel being produced as an English audiobook.
For starters, I very much appreciated that the narrator is a Korean-American actor. Ki Hong Lee is a fairly recognizable actor with a good number of acting credits. He has a very nice reading voice and I really appreciated that the Korean names were pronounced correctly. I recently listened to an audiobook of by a Korean-American author which had a white woman narrating and it just wasn’t the same. Her inflections and cadence all hit wrong somehow. The audio for Solo Leveling felt right, it feels Korean.
The Story
The story of Solo Leveling is really cool. The world has been invaded by some sort of inexplicable monster phenomenon. Their dungeons show up randomly all over the world, and if not erradicated quickly, the monsters escape and wreak havoc on the citizens of the world. At the same time these dungeons began appearing, a portion of the earth’s population gained the abilities needed to fight these monsters and close the dungeons. These people are called Hunters and they come in all different levels and abilities.
The main character of the story is a low-level Hunter who’s abilities rank just barely above that of a regular human. Sung Jin Woo is an E-rank Hunter who gets hurt almost every time he enters a dungeon, but keeps going back because he needs to earn money for his mother’s hospital bills and his sister’s med school tuition. One day Jin Woo enters a surprise dungeon that changes everything for him and he begins to gain power and ability as a Hunter.
As soon as I started listening to this story, I was hooked. I couldn’t stop imagining what a great Kdrama it would make. It has a sort of Sweet Home vibe crossed with and eSports story. When I looked it up, I found out that the Solo Leveling rights are rumoured to have been picked up for a potential future tv series. Unfortunately for Kdrama fans, it seems like the rights have been picked up by an American production group. Fingers crossed this is something like Netflix which will work with a Korean production crew to create something along the vein of Sweet Home and not something watered down and, well, white. I know I keep referencing Sweet Home but I can really imagine this story working well if produced by the same team who created that stellar series.
Platforms
This story first appeared online on KakaoPage in 2016. In 2018, the story was translated into English for the Webnovel platform under the title “Only I Level Up”. I’m currently reading through the translation on Webnovel with my 10 year old. He wanted to have me read it after catching a bit of the audio I was listening to. He’s very interested in the story, but thought maybe there was too much swearing for him, so I’m editing that out as I go. The audio novel I listened to is listed as Volume One, and it appears to take us up to about chapter 40 on Webnovel. Unfortunately, that is also all that is unlocked on Webnovel. Their platform is set up so that the average reader could unlock a chapter or two a day without paying actual cash. Unfortunately for us, there are 270 chapters and we’ve already burned through 16 of them in 3 days. I suspect we will wind up forking out some cash for this one.
The Webnovel platform also has a graphic novel version of the story. The artwork is pretty good and some aspects of the story definitely work better with pictures to tell them. Since this story is about a character levelling up as if in a video game, a lot of the story concerns looking at his stat windows and such. It’s definitely easier to skim through those segments than it is to listen to them and follow it on the audio.
As far as the translation itself goes, I prefer the one used by the Hachette Audio company for the audiobook I listened to. It’s just a little cleaner and easier to follow than the translation on Webnovel. In particular, I find the little translator notes found throughout the Webnovel version to be a bit distracting, especially as I’m reading it aloud to someone else. The Webnovel platform does also have an audio option available, but it is simply a robot voice saying the words. It’s a great option for folks who need it, but I would definitely recommend the official audiobook above the AI version.
Final Thoughts:
I am really, really enjoying this story. The concept is pretty clever and the main character is quite likeable. I look forward to seeing where the novel ends up. I desperately wish this was going to become a kdrama. I seriously dislike the idea that some American production company has bought up the rights just to keep it from anybody else. If they don’t just shelf the project and do actually make this story into a tv series, I hope they don’t sand off it’s creepier edges and whitewash the whole thing. There is also a game in the works with Netmarble company which I am curious to see how it turns out. The story obviously has all the necessary parts to become a game, but it loses some of its unique aspects if it is actually a game and not just a story about a guy who’s life becomes a sort of game.
Overall, I highly recommend checking out this story, in whichever format you prefer.