The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish Vol. 3 by Xue Shan Fei Hu: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol 3 by Xue Shan Fei Hu

The delightfully silly transmigration story has reached its third volume. Prince Jing has been ordered to the empire’s western border to show his mettle, and naturally Li Yu, his beloved pet fish, follows him there. It’s a quiet town pestered by bandits and locusts, and Li Yu has practical suggestions for solving both. The latter is handled by bringing ducks to the affected areas to eat the insects, which leads to establishing a restaurant too.

The main story is Prince Jing and Li Yu consummating their relationship (which I thought they’d done already), which leads to a surprise pregnancy. The fish scamming system, the programme guiding Li Yu’s transmigration journey, had asked for Li Yu’s consent, but did it during the act itself, when he wasn’t exactly paying attention and just agreed to anything it said. The possibility of pregnancy hadn’t even occurred to him, both of them being male.

Luckily, the system gives him a choice to handle the pregnancy as a fish. It still makes him a rather unique male fish, but at least the entire thing is easy for him. The only difficulty is hiding it from Prince Jing, because he still believes the prince doesn’t know the man in his bed and his favourite pet fish are the same. But when four fish eggs pop out, it’s difficult to keep secrets anymore.

Four lovely boy fishes emerge, but they need to wait for nine months before they turn into babies, a good stretch to fake Li Yu’s pregnancy. Despite some questions raised, most people take it in a stride. In the background, Prince Jing is trying to make the emperor to accept Li Yu as his consort instead of concubine. Once the babies are born, i.e. turn human, he finally gets the permission and the two get married. No one opposes and no one questions that the babies are theirs. There’s even blood test done by imperial physicians who confirm the children’s lineage.

Apart from one last test for Li Yu, during which he learns to transform into a merman, the rest of the story revolves around the babies. They’re rather unique, having spent nine months as fishes learning things a normal human baby has no idea of. They can communicate with each other and try to do so with others too, and learn to walk and talk and even sort of write before they’re even a year old. They’re cute, but not as cute as Li Yu as a fish, and there are no silly antics. Even outsiders notice this, when Prince Jing tries to show off a substitute fish as his favourite pet.

But the sixth prince hasn’t given up his ambition to be named as the crown prince. He’s stirring trouble on the background, and is ready to strike. The volume ends just as he makes his move. It’s a cliffhanger of sorts, but I would’ve read on even without it. The feel-good, low angst silliness of this series keeps me happy for days.

That being said, I only gave the volume four stars for slightly slower pace. Li Yu turned into a respectable adult who no longer had time for his fishy antics, and the children weren’t quite up to his level of cuteness yet. The next volume appears to be the final, so I’m hoping it’ll bring the old Li Yu back.