Golden Terrace vol 1 by Cang Wu Bin Bai: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

Golden Terrace vol 1 by Cang Wu Bin Bai

Golden Terrace is Chinese m/m romance set in an imaginary Chinese empire in a distant past. It’s not wuxia/xianxia fantasy; there are no extravagant martial arts scenes, cultivation sects, magic or supernatural elements. It’s historical romance with court intrigue and political machinations.

Fu Shen is a third-generation leader of cavalry troops that have kept the empire safe for decades. At 23, he’s revered and feared. When he is badly injured in an ambush, the emperor seizes the opportunity to order him back to the capital, ostensibly to recuperate, but in reality, it’s to weaken his influence.

For a further measure, the emperor orders Fu Shen to marry a man so that his family line can’t continue. The husband (or wife) to be is Yan Xiaohan, 25, a feared general of the imperial investigator guard that the emperor uses as his secret police. For him, the marriage is yet another step up in his slow path to the top, whereas Fu Shen opposes it. It doesn’t help that the two don’t really get along.

But Fu Shen is in for a surprise when it turns out Yan Xiaohan is determined to look after him in his convalescence. And as he remembers events from their past, he and the reader realise that there is more to Yan Xiaohan than his reputation.

The romance unfurls slowly. Most of the attention is in several mysteries. Fu Shen wants to find out who organised the ambush and why. Yan Xiaohan has to investigate odd deaths in rivalling imperial troops, a mystery that seems to implicate Fu Shen. And at the background there’s court intrigue and machinations of an emperor who isn’t ready to die just yet.

The mysteries didn’t always follow logic or make sense to a western reader. The bad guys sprang from nowhere and the actions and investigations seemed rather random. There were side characters that went unused as plot devices, like Fu Shen’s sister, the wife of a prince, who made a brief appearance, never to be mentioned again. And the romance seemed to happen behind the scenes. The reader had an impression a lot had taken place behind the closed doors, only to learn at the end that the marriage hadn’t even been consummated yet.

I had some issues with the translation as well, especially when it came to indicating the speakers. At times it was really difficult to figure out who was acting or thinking and who was the object of action when only the pronoun he was used for both in the same sentence and paragraph. I don’t know if the same happens in the original text, but the translator could have used given names at several places to make the narrative clearer. 

Nevertheless, the story and the main characters were compelling, and the atmosphere and the historical setting were interesting enough to make this a pleasurable read that I found difficult to put down, transforming a three-star read to a five-star one. The first volume ends at a natural point without a cliffhanger. I’ll definitely read more.