Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers

Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die is a cozy fantasy, of sorts. In a world not our own, or maybe it is, mad sorcerer Merulo—not called mad yet—declares in front of the entire court that he’s going to kill the god and put an end to magic. Forty years later, he’s still at it, only now he’s also at war with the church, which obviously doesn’t want their god to be killed.

The war isn’t going well for the church, but the Elder comes up with a prophecy for which she sacrificed the heart of last dragon, a great source of magic in a world where magic isn’t unlimited. Sir Cameron, a knight of church, needs to be killed by a specific method at a specific spot to bring the downfall of Merulo.

Cameron has coasted being a knight by avoiding battles when possible. His greatest fear is dying, which is very probable when fighting the sorcerer. So, when he learns about the prophecy, he doesn’t choose a noble self-sacrifice like the church assumes, but flees. The only place he can flee to is Merulo.

The sorcerer isn’t happy that he’s there, but since Cameron not dying is in his interests, he takes him in. Thing is, the prophecy is very specific and Cameron needs to die as he is, a beautiful blond man. Transforming him into a vulture isn’t a problem, then. Merulo prefers him being a vulture even, because Cameron has a very specific bodily reaction to being threatened and intimidated. Cameron doesn’t mind being a vulture as such, but having a human body would be better, so he sets out to cajole Merulo, until he has his body back, by way of being turned a woman.

At this point, the story had been a fairly amusing romp of Cameron’s attempts to survive by seducing Merulo. The young man is conceited and a bit obtuse, but good-natured and willing to help Merulo, even though he doesn’t understand Merulo’s need to kill the god when he’ll lose not only his magic but probably his life too. However, the joke was growing stale and it wasn’t even mid-point yet. Not even the attempts of Cameron’s former elf squire Glenda to hunt Cameron to kill him personally amused.

I was ready to put the book down, but then a couple of twists in short succession switched the story to a new gear. The tone changed too from a sex comedy to more mellow search for connection and family. Merulo gets help in his endeavour, and after forty years, he’s finally ready to kill the god and change the world forever. Cameron isn’t happy about it, because he’s learned to love the cantankerous old sorcerer and doesn’t want him to die, but since that’s what Merulo wants, he’ll be there to the end.

And then there was another twist, which quite frankly didn’t work very well. There had been many hints, but it completely switched the tone for the rest of the book from a secondary world fantasy to something opposite. The book should’ve ended before that; it would’ve been a good ending. With the twist, the book would’ve needed much more story than we got to make it work. The epilogue is fairly open ended though, so maybe there will be a sequel exploring what comes after. I’d definitely want to know how the world will fare, and have answers to a few questions that were ignored, like Glenda’s lack of emotions, and why Cameron’s father hated him, because it wasn’t solely for being gay. And what happened to the chancellor?

The story had potential, but it was much too long for the plot. The world felt constantly off, but that was deliberate, considering its origins—which also turned out to be a small let-down. Cameron was a fun character and easy to root for despite being conceited—and he had an upsetting awakening regarding that. Merulo stayed true to his character throughout even after learning to love too. Glenda’s POV chapters promised more than they gave and, in the end, she was pushed aside for another character. I’m especially disappointed in the latter, a half-dragon witch. The way she was presented gave to understand she would have a compassionate impact on the characters. 

The story had its fun moments, but never more than a chuckle. Cameron pestering Merulo for sex was constant, but when the other finally gave in, the scenes ended and were never mentioned again. Not even when Cameron was a woman to compare matters. There were hints about Cameron’s preferred gender, but nothing was made of that either, even though he got to experience being woman, only to want to be a man again. The pace was fast and light-hearted almost throughout. Chapter headings were fun and worth reading, but they too often promised insights that were never shown on the page.

All in all, this is a difficult book to rate. I’m dithering between three and four stars, but since it was well-written, the author managed to bring the rather impossible story to a satisfying end, the characters were good, and the twists interesting, I will give it four stars.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine Vol. 1 by Liu Gou Hua: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

After the Disabled God of War Became my Concubine vol. 1 by Liu Gou Hua

Continuing with my streak of most recent danmei publications in English. Liu Gou Hua is also a new author to me and they turned out to be a very good writer. The narrative flows without repetition and the plot seems to be actually leading somewhere.

After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine is a transmigration danmei novel with a historical setting. History professor, Jiang Suizhou, has just finished rebuking a thesis by his student that seems to be based on imagination, only to find himself transported to a world that is exactly like the thesis described. He’s Prince of Jing, whom history doesn’t know much about, as he was a frail, chronically ill person who died young. His older brother, Jiang Shunheng, is an emperor in exile, and the last emperor of Jing dynasty. And Prince of Jing is just about to take a captured and tortured enemy general, Huo Wujiu, as his concubine, forced by the emperor to humiliate Prince of Jing and Huo Wujiu both.

Having studied the era for years, Jiang Suizhou is well-versed in who is who and how things work, but now his most important guideline is the thesis, which is based on the marriage that history knows nothing about. And according to it, Prince of Jing will die in three years at the hands of General Huo as a retaliation for the suffering in his household.

Jiang Suizhou’s objective is clear: avoid dying. He needs to treat Huo Wujiu, now Madame Huo, so well the general won’t want to kill him. That’s easier said than done. Prince of Jing has a reputation of a cruel man and compassion is out of character. The emperor is a foolish brute controlled by his uncle and enjoys nothing more than tormenting Prince of Jing and Huo Wujiu both. Jiang Suizhou knows that the empire will fall in three years when Huo Wujiu returns to north, but he can’t just hide and wait it out. But he’s almost powerless in the court and every little thing he tries leads to other people suffering.

On the home front, he needs to help Huo Wujiu heal from the torture without rousing suspicions. Outwardly, Madame Huo doesn’t seem to warm up to the prince, but the reader knows he’s taken an unexpected view of the frail prince and thinks he’s in need of protecting. And that has made him regard the prince’s two male concubines with hostility. He’s jealous even, when the prince spends many nights with them. Little does he know that the concubines are Prince of Jing’s advisors. The volume ends with a tiny cliffhanger of them giving advice that will likely infuriate Huo Wujiu and wipe away the goodwill Jiang Suizhou has managed to build.

This was a very good start for the story. It was a bit slow at first, and the pace didn’t really pick up much, but there was nothing unnecessary, the court intrigue was good, and everything happened in a logical order. Jiang Suizhou was a good character in a tight spot balancing between the emperor’s wrath and Huo Wujiu. The latter didn’t have a large role in the first volume, but he managed to make a difference in Jiang Suizhou’s life already. Despite Huo Wujiu’s budding jealousy, the romance didn’t really go anywhere yet, but it has a good foundation here. Prince of Jing’s head eunuch, Meng Qianshan, was a good comical addition with his constant misunderstandings and good-natured meddling.

I think there might be revelations in the future about a deeper connection between the past and the future. Jiang Suizhou looks exactly like Prince of Jing, he shares family name with the emperor, and Prince of Jing’s real name wasn’t revealed. Jiang Suizhou doesn’t know it, as it’s one of the things archives never mention. I’m looking forward to reading more to see where all this leads to.

The Villain’s White Halo (Novel) Vol. 1 by Hao Da Yi Juan Wei Sheng Zhi: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

The Villain's White Halo by Hao Da Juan Wei Sheng Zhi

This is a new Chinese BL author to me, and there doesn’t seem to be other books by them translated to English yet. The Villain’s White Halo is a transmigration novel and takes place in a historical fantasy cultivation world with its own geography and timelines of hundreds of thousands of years, so not a secondary earth.

The Villain emerges as a soul into a Rebirth Company of the in-between space, a business that caters to the needs of souls that want to transmigrate or reborn. The Villain has been transmigrating for so long that he doesn’t remember his original name or world, but in all of them he’s been a two-bit background henchman of the main villain, dying after a couple of lines, only to transmigrate again. This time, he wants to be the final boss.

The employee at the company is eager to help and sells The Villain an ultimate final boss packet and a fiend halo that activates at certain triggers, like glaring or saying “I was never good to begin with,” and other villainy lines. The Villain gets to choose the world, but then he’s sucked into it so fast that he forgets the halo. The employee throws one after him, only to realise he sent the wrong one. Unfortunately, the world seals before he can correct the mistake.

The Villain emerges as Yin Biyue, a 19-year-old cultivator. Turns out, he’s in a jail for trying to kill Luo Mingchuan, a fellow cultivator a few years older, and the protagonist for whom The Villain chose this world in the first place. Things look bad for Yin Biyue, but the fiend halo, which is in fact the opposite, though still activated by the villainy triggers, comes to a help, and makes Luo Mingchuan take the blame for the incident. Both go free.

The beginning is a bit confusing, and rather slow. The pace doesn’t pick up much from there, but the story becomes more straightforward and fairly interesting. Yin Biyue settles into his new life as a cultivator. Thanks to all his previous lives, he knows what that entails, and he has a soul much stronger than the OG, so cultivation isn’t a problem for him. His sword is. It won’t recognise his qi energy, a huge handicap for a cultivator and a potential for a disaster, because other cultivators might find out he’s not the original Yin Biyue.

The story leads Yin Biyue, a fellow disciple Duan Chongxuan, who has secrets of his own, and Luo Mingchuan to a cultivation tournament. The plot of the first volume is about the journey there and the tournament, which doesn’t end before the first volume does. There are small conflicts every now and then, but nothing that the protagonist couldn’t overcome.

Yin Biyue is a good and interesting character, but he isn’t much of a villain. The OG was filled with hate, which may have led to him trying to kill Luo Mingchuan, but it doesn’t affect Yin Biyue. But because he’s decided to be a villain, that’s what he sees himself as, but the malfunctioning halo complicates things. At first, he decides that the storyline is the villain befriending the hero, only to backstab him, but as the story progresses, he becomes more and more aware that he might not want to be a villain anymore. And on the side, his friendship with Luo Mingchuan starts to turn into something more.

Despite the rather straightforward storyline, it’s not boring. The author has a great way to describe cultivation process from within, and make fight scenes lively and like the reader is part of it. The tone is fairly cozy and the plot low-key, and not very emotional. Scenes at the Rebirth Company make it a little different from other stories, and I kept waiting for them to intervene with the real halo. Maybe that’ll happen later. This wasn’t the most exciting danmei, but I’m interested in reading more.

The White Cat's Divine Scratching Post (Novel) Vol. 1 by Lv Ye Qian He: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

The White Cat's Divine Scratching Post by Lv Ye Qian He

Since I liked The Wife Comes First, I started immediately another book by Lv Ye Qian He that has been recently published too. The White Cat's Divine Scratching Post is very different from the first book. It’s set in an ancient cultivation world instead of a historical setting, and has fantasy elements to it. But it’s equally delightful and a bit better even.

Mo Tianliao is a follower of the unorthodox cultivation path and a renown maker of artifacts, but now he’s made one that can destroy the world. So, the cultivation world has teamed up to kill him before he can complete the artifact. Mo Tianliao has one more ace in his sleeve, however, a trap that destroys everyone hunting him, including him. He only manages to save his spirit beast, Pawpaw, a little white cat who has been his sole companion for centuries.

He doesn’t completely die, however. To his surprise, he finds his spirit protected by a strange force, and so he wanders around the world for centuries in search for a body for himself. He tricks a divine tree into accepting him, and forges himself a body much like his old one of it, only he’s a little younger looking and without his previous cultivation level.

Since he needs to be strong in case his enemies are still around, he joins a remote sect to start training anew. It’s a curious sect though, that only accepts beautiful disciples. And no one is as beautiful as Qingtong, a divine looking master who chooses Mo Tianliao as his personal disciple, much to the other disciples’ dismay. Mo Tianliao is stronger than he looks though, with knowledge of his first life helping him. Which comes in handy, because his shizun’s teaching method is ‘figure it out yourself.’

To his absolute joy, Mo Tianliao finds Pawpaw there too. But he’s smaller than he should be for his age, and he’s always sleeping, which worries Mo Tianliao. The cat isn’t the only one worrying him. His shizun is also in poor health. As Mo Tianliao settles into his new life, he starts noticing curious things about the sect. And he starts noticing that his new shizun and Pawpaw share remarkable similarities.

This was a delightful start to a story. Because of the title, some comparisons has been made with The Husky and His White Cat Shizun by Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou, but the similarities end with the title. This one is fairly cozy, the conflicts small and easily dealt with, and fight scenes are short, though there are actual casualties. Mo Tianliao, despite hailing from an unorthodox cultivation path, isn’t evil or in need of reconciling his past, and his love for his cat is absolute. Pawpaw is an actual cat, self-esteemed and with a tendency to scratch Mo Tianlio for slightest things, which the latter suffers calmly, and more easily now that he can turn parts of his body into a tree. Qingtong is exactly like a cat, capricious and a bit selfish, but affectionate in his own way. The main side characters are funny and all with a secret that I won’t reveal here, because it brought me so much joy.

The plot goes on in a steady pace and gives a notion that the original work wasn’t published as a web novel, because there are no side quests or unnecessary scenes, and the narrative doesn’t repeat itself. It’s not a highly emotional plot, although the romance starts budding here, but it has high stakes, because it turns out that the only way to heal Qingtong is by completing the artifact Mo Tianlio died for in the first place. I’m looking forward to reading how that turns out.

The Wife Comes First: Qi Wei Shang (Novel) Vol. 1 by Lv Ye Qian He: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

The Wife Comes First by Lv Ye Qian He

My first review of the year is a Chinese historical danmei by a new author to me, Lv Ye Qian He, who is very popular in China according to the back copy introduction. And her work turned out to be delightful, so hopefully there will be more books by her translated to English. 

Prince Cheng is the third prince, he and the second prince being by the empress, with the first prince being by a maid and the fourth prince by the empress consort. All this leads to a muddy succession and any one of them could become the next emperor. As the empress is dead, the empress consort pulls the strings. And she’s made it so that Prince Cheng has to marry a man to make him ineligible to become the emperor. Having male wives for this reason is very typical in the book’s world.

Prince Cheng rebels violently against this, treating his male wife badly and spending most of his life fighting wars. But the scheming empress consort isn’t satisfied and ten years later, Prince Cheng finds himself facing death, accused of many crimes, some of which are made up. And the only person by his side is his male wife, Mu Hanzhang. Moved by this loyalty by the very person who should hate him, he wishes at his death to make amends to him.

Prince Cheng is granted his wish and he finds himself returned to the morning after his wedding night with Mu Hanzhang. It’s inauspicious, because his anger had made him treat Mu Hanzhang very badly in bed and the wife is now very afraid of him. But he sets out to make things better. Armed with the knowledge of how things turned out, he teams with the second prince, who also had turned out to be more loyal in his first life than he’d realised before death. Together they work to remove the people who schemed against them, and to make sure Mu Hanzhang has a loving and supporting husband by his side.

This was a very well written, mostly plot-driven opening to an interesting story. The tone is fairly light, but not comical, and obstacles are relatively easily dealt with, but not so easily that the reader would lose interest. Both main characters are interesting and easy to root for.

There’s a lot of palace intrigue and scheming, not only against Prince Cheng but Mu Hanzhang too. The latter turns out to be a great asset to the prince, and little by little, Prince Cheng’s need to make amends turns into love. Mu Hanzhang takes more time to warm to him. But a war is inevitable. The volume ends as Prince Cheng prepares to leave, maybe for years. I’ll definitely read more.