khyie's Reviews (267)

 This wasn't bad and that might just be because Metasequioa has a way of writing (and the translators have a way of translating) that's incredibly readable. The story passes by fast and you don't quite realize that there wasn't a whole lot of substance to it until it's already over. It's ending felt much more developed than Metasequioa's other story, Shh There's a Beast... (which still felt like a slap in the face), and the relationship is cute, but therein kind of lies my biggest problem with it. I will say this is one of the few stories where the main character has been stuck in the form of some type of thing whose whole purpose is to sell cute, in this case a snow leopard cub, and I've actually finished the story instead of dropping halfway for one reason or another but it still hits the same problem the others have, which portrays the MC in an incredibly childish way which somehow makes him inherently sexually loveable to the ML. I could understand if it was just affection and an appreciation for cute because hell, I coo over my cat constantly, but these ML invariably do display sexual/romantic intent towards the "cute" object of their affection. And that IS weird and, on varying levels depending (god, I'm looking at you I'm Not Human) skeevy.
In this one, the main character cannot verbally communicate for the vast majority of this story. He can make cute little mewling noises and eventually reaches the stage of baby talk, but full on sentences are beyond him. I swear, about 90% of his lines in this story are "Aoji" because he can't say Aojia's name at first and cutely crying his baby name repeatedly is not something they drop even when he can eventually say his name properly. This is compounded by a repeated emphasis on how adorable and cute the MC is, which are inherently childish traits and they are the only personality that Aojia is exposed to. He does show behaviors that make it clear he's an adult and reasonably intelligent at that (he opens his own online store, sells goods, can carve crazy good sculptures) but the interactions between the MC and ML are all focused entirely on how adorable and cute the MC is, even when he's carving and there's something inherently creepy about the ML falling in love with these types of characters because the ML doesn't really know anything about the actually person beyond they are a cub/plant/kitten/etc that is really adorable (again-a childish trait) and maybe has an interesting quirk that is supposed to help distinguish them from being an actual child (in this case, stellar carving skills). And, for that matter, we as the readers, don't really know much about the MC beyond adorable, can open shops, is an adorable cub, is THE BEST BEAST CARVER EVER OMG, is adorable, is obsessed with Aojia's dragon form, and is, you guessed it, adorable. I will say that it's not nearly as off-putting as I'm Not Human, which revels in treating the MC like a baby but also wanting him to be in a sexual relationship with the ML, but it's still... something.

I know this review kind of became my venting ground for these types of sell-cute stories and I do think it's something important to talk about or I'd remove most of the verbiage, but I would like to end this by emphasizing that this is definitely one of the more palatable of that particular variety. It doesn't drag on and while the MC does spend almost 98% of the story in his cute cub form, most of the romance is characterized by Aojia appreciating the MC's carving skills, calling him his wife, and hoping for him to eventually take human form without undue pressure on him to do so. I can't remember any moments where he pervs on the cub (I've read that too T__T why god) and most of it is pretty cute. The plot flows pretty smoothly. Characters outside of the main couple are pretty one dimensional and even the main CP are thin on personality beyond your regular stereotypes, but it all comes together in a decently entertaining fashion. I do like this story but it's not particularly stand out (aside from being a sell-cute-creature-MC story I actually finished). 

 Cute little fluff story with an established relationship just trying to figure out how to be together again. It's light on any real substance and the ending is abrupt but I genuinely enjoyed both of the main characters and the robot housekeeper trying so hard to become a fifth member of the family. He's my favorite.
Pros:
the fight me!MC
Doting!gong
Old Iron's just trying his best to not get overwritten and dreams of being one of the family
Poor Song Bohao being eternally compared to the ML like he has any chance of winning that
the bad guys get satisfyingly punished
A tree and a lion is one of the weirder things cnovels have tried to get me to ship but it made my wife send me a series of incredulous emojis telling her about it so it's great

Cons:
the kid is only there to sell meng and be a plot device
no seriously the ending is so abrupt that it's a bit like slamming into a wall
describing it, it seems like this story should have plenty of substance but if you look at it too closely it's like Swiss cheese, big gaping holes of what could've been 

 A short, unremarkable transmigrate-to-rehabilitate-the-villain story. This time there's a system that punishes him whenever the ML kills someone, which I think is a bit much and if it was explained why he needed to be rehabilitated, I've forgotten. It was kind of pointless anyway because it didn't really work. 

Pretty standard fluff for this type of story but it was well-written and the translation was superb so it was hard to put down. I liked that the ML knew pretty quickly that MC wasn't the same person though I really couldn't figure out why no one else in his life questioned it because he seemed to be a pretty radically different from the original goods. Still, it was cute. Nothing surprising or original really happened in the story but it was still entertaining.
I think the only question I have about this story was what business, exactly, he was forced to do? Unless becoming bros with the protagonist of the story counts as business???? 

Overall, this could be considered a pretty sweet story. It has a touch of a bite in it

omg, my heart is probably never going to recover from that scene of the ML watching the MC sabotage and then un-sabotage his car over and over again before going and HELPING him, it's been months and my heart still clenches when I think about it

but after the first arc it falls pretty heavily to pattern and starts feeling more like your generic QT story. The last two arcs (the cultivation world and then real world) were really sweet and I'm glad they got their happy ending.

I emphatically did not like the extra chapter about the systems. There was something really jarring about the whole "hey this is a love triangle AAAAAND END" and part of it is just a violent hatred for love triangles and the rest is that it was essentially pointless. The author didn't do anything with it beyond establish it existed and then bam. Story's over. Not that I wanted to deal with excruciating chapters of two men fighting over what was clearly going to be an oblivious MC (also annoying) but it was grating to just cut it off there. 

 I wrote my initial review about two days after I read the story and all I could remember about it was that it took a looooong time for those boys to finally screw considering how thirsty they were for each other. It was a very simple, zero conflict story. Nothing really stands out except that it's a rare one with smut. 

 Very wordy which is pretty par for the course with Kate Elliot. An interesting sci-fi romp that moves at a surprisingly quick pace after the first bit. Still, I can't say I was terribly invested in any of the characters and I put it down for quite awhile without really feeling a burning need to come back. I only finished it because I didn't actually have that much left. It was interesting and engaging while I was reading it. There were a lot of moving pieces that I'm curious to see how are further developed. The big reveal at the end didn't have quite the impact on me that I think was expected and that could partially be because of the long break that I took before finishing it off.
I'm sure it's been mentioned in other reviews but if you're here for the lesbian romance, the relationship is already established and it's on serious backburner to the plot. YMMV on how much that matters to you. The het romance definitely gets more time and exploration. It's interesting because Sun seems like the title character, but this feels more like Persephone's book. After the beginning where we establish who Sun is and what her companions are, she kind of fades into a side character and Persephone is the one who has the more interesting plot threads tied to her.
Aside from the three POV characters, Sun, Persephone, and the other... I really can't remember her name at this moment since everything with her is still very much in the establishment of future-important-character, everyone else just kind of... is. They exist in the story to support the main three but if any of them were killed off, I'm not sure I would actually care because I feel no real connection to them. We'll see where it goes from here. 

Everything about this was too simplistic and predictable. It made it incredibly boring to read. The MC is another of those perfect, pretty, and adorable shou who I hesitate to call naive, all things considered, but it's clear if the author could get away with making him naive, they would've. The ML pretty much instantly falls in love with him and their relationship is already squared away before the apocalypse even starts. From there, everything gets terribly, boringly predictable. The MC's storage space is, of course, ridiculously huge and can store pretty much all the supplies, cars, and fuel they want, as well as having plenty of space to farm what seems to be infinite amounts of crops and a significant amount of livestock. The ML is, of course, OP. Acquired teammates are instantly super helpful and instantly loyal. A child is acquired. A cat is acquired. The army loves them because they're so helpful. I'm not sure this author actually understands how walls or vehicles work. Everything they need or want falls into their lap very handily and everyone who is not on their side is incredibly stupid and easy to deal with.
By the time one of the MC's teammates swapped bodies with the bloody cat, because apparently even their cat has superpowers, I was so bored out of my mind that I was literally looking for anything else I could read. 

 Well. That was really something to read. I don't think the plot was really all that atypical for a historical novel, but in terms of character complexity this was a fascinating read. It's hard to call anyone in this book a good person aside from, perhaps, one or two people, but you still can't help but want the main characters to get what they want. I think character complexity is probably one of Priest's strongest writing traits and it shows here. I also find it somewhat fascinating to see what people are willing to do to put someone in power who is, essentially, the lesser of three evils. Like sure, Helian Yi is going to be good for the country as a whole and he's certainly a better option than his two brothers, but he does some incredibly vile things to aid in his ascension and I continually couldn't help but think that there was probably a better way to accomplish what he was trying to do. Part of this could be that villain complexity is lacking. We're told rather than having it demonstrated that the second prince is incredibly cunning and the greatest opponent to Helian Yi being able to take the throne. Mostly, it just seems to be that the Emperor is exactly as foolish as everyone thinks he is. This means that the two worst acts perpetuated in the novel don't seem as necessary as the story would have you believe.
That being said, Jing Beiyuan is an interesting character and I enjoyed following him on his journey. I found the romance a little subpar, but that's mostly because I didn't care for Wu Xi's particular brand of overbearing. Still, to give him credit where credit is due, when Jing Beiyuan put his foot down, Wu Xi conceded and I did feel like the development of their emotions was genuine. I could see why they liked each other and how it all came to be.
Overall it was a very satisfying read. I can't say that I came out of it liking Helian Yi or Zhou Zishu but my feelings on them, overall, are very mixed. I understand their reasons behind what they did even if I could not possibly agree with their actions. Cool motive still murder and all of that. 

 This is the story of two not-good people getting involved in a plot being pushed along by a bunch of other crappy people. Like, full disclosure, none of the adults in this book are good people. But that might actually be one of the things I enjoyed about it, the fact that these people could all very easily be categorized as villains depending on the story you're reading.
Note: Like many other reviewers, it's going to be difficult for me not to compare the book and the show here as I was watching and reading this story concurrently.
One of the biggest things that initially turned me away from this novel was that I had read a review which said this was a redemption story for Zhou Zishu, which I didn't think he was particularly redeemable after what happened Lord Seventh. Thankfully, it didn't give me that vibe. Could've been the translation but I never actually felt like Zhou Zishu was seeking redemption or really, even genuinely sorry about what he did. He felt it was necessary and his only real regret in the matter was how it impacted his younger martial brother. He is MUCH less soft in the book than he is in the show, but I like him more here.
Of course, Wen Kexing was probably my favorite, just in terms of pure shamelessness, and I liked the way he and Zhou Zishu played off each other. While the show did a LOT to expand on the plot within this book, making it much meatier and the side characters less one-note, I think it did do a bit of a disservice to Wen Kexing. In order to make Zhou Zishu look better, Wen Kexing had to look like he was a step behind some of the events in the show or was making missteps, whereas for the most part, book!Wen Kexing is definitely ahead of the game with everyone else.

Part of that might be because book!Wen Kexing actually knows who one of the ultimate villains of the story is before the start, whereas show!Wen Kexing misidentifies that person (so Zhou Zishu can figure it out first).

Also, I really hated the duplicate glaze armor bit in the show because the consequences of that extended much further than Wen Kexing intended and I feel like book!Wen Kexing wasn't that stupid. This isn't to say that Wen Kexing was a better person in the book. Only that his revenge plot definitely felt more focused on the people who'd actually wronged him, rather than lashing out at anyone and everyone.
YMMV on whether you find the plot insufficient. I personally liked the pace it moved at and the tighter focus, It didn't feel like it was being dragged out or becoming cumbersome like I did with the show, but it definitely doesn't take the time to expand on any of the characters except the main 3. There were a couple of scenes that hit me a lot harder in the book than in show

the constant push and pull of Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu being friends or breaking up in the show made the scene when Wen Kexing found out the truth about Zhou Zishu dying so much less... impactful. They've already split up because of differences in opinions like six times at this point. What's one more? Whereas in the book, that's the first time that Wen Kexing tries to break away from Zhou Zishu (albeit immensely unsuccessfully) and I felt the heartbreak of that fissure a lot more strongly.

 Overall I found it an interesting story about two villains fighting against other villains in order to have their own good ending and somewhat of an exploration of "do the ends justify the means" at least where Wen Kexing is concerned. I'd definitely recommend it.