The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol. 4 by Xue Shan Fei Hu: review

4/5 stars

The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol. 4 by Xue Shan Fei Hu

The delightful and silly story of a transmigrating fish in a book about ancient China comes to an end in this volume. It doesn’t go out in a bang or with high emotions. It ends with a sweet happily ever after.

The last volume is slightly uneven. The main story about those plotting against the emperor comes to an end already during the first third of the book. There are some surprises in store for the reader and Li Yu both, but thanks to his ingenuity, a coup is thwarted and the emperor survives another day. As a reward, Prince Jing is finally named the crown prince.

It’s what Li Yu had been tasked to do by the fish scamming system, but apparently it isn’t enough. The final tribulation isn’t over. The rest of the book meanders to that goal with small side steps that include people realising Li Yu and the beloved pet fish might be the same.

Mostly, it’s about family stuff. The biggest drama comes from another pregnancy. This time Li Yu accidentally chooses the wrong option and has to go through it in human form. He is not happy, sob, sob. A little girl is born and instantly made a princess by the happy emperor. But it appears she’s not able to turn into a fish like her brothers and fish father.

And then, finally, the last tribulation comes to an end. Li Yu learns that the only reason it hadn’t was because Prince Jing was afraid it would make Li Yu leave. But he promises to stay forever. As a reward, Li Yu is now a human that can turn into a fish, not a fish that can turn into a human. And he’s given an option to return to his life and not remember what took place in the book world. Obviously, he refuses. But he’s given a chance to visit once, and he can take someone with him. It’s a nice side quest, but it could’ve been better.

The book ends with a brief description of the happily ever after for the pair. A prosperous empire and a good rule follow when Prince Jing becomes the emperor instead of the tyranny of the original story. And finally, no family member is left behind when it comes to fishy antics. The end.

This was a delightful ending, but much of it was just fillers to make the required word count. The reader slightly disconnects from the story, and while there are cute moments, they remain a bit distant. There are barely any fishy antics and the children are sidelined from the action. But the love between Prince Jing and Li Yu is wonderful and their happily ever after is well deserved. All in all, a lovely, delightful story.  

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.

The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish vol. 2 by Xue Shan Fei Hu: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish by Xue Shan Fei Hu

Volume 2 of The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish is even cuter than the first. Prince Jing is such a simp while Li Yu believes he’s only helping the prince in order to fulfil the tasks of the computer program, aka ‘the fish scamming system’, in charge of his transmigration journey back to human.

The volume starts where the previous one ended, with Prince Jing realising that Li Yu, the young man who mysteriously appears and disappears in his quarters, is in fact his beloved pet fish Xiaoyu. But instead of being shocked, he concludes Li Yu must be a yao, an animal spirit that can take a human form, on a personal trial. And since Li Yu doesn’t reveal his true identity, he concludes the spirit wants to keep it a secret, so he won’t bring up that he knows the young man and the fish are the same. It causes many silly moments as Li Yu struggles to hide before he transforms back to a fish, believing his identity is still a secret.

Li Yu has no idea he’s supposed to be a yao. He has his hands full with increasingly bizarre demands of the fish scamming system, like indulging with the prince. His rewards include a transformation into a proper koi fish, much to the astonishment of everyone, and learning Prince Jing’s secrets that raise more questions than they solve. But he’s still limited to only two hours as a human every day.

Prince Jing has his own ideas of what it means that the fish is a yao: he must share essence with the young man in order for him to grow. And that means intimate contact. But when he tries to kiss Li Yu, everything goes sideways. Li Yu has no idea what’s come over the prince and finds the whole incident frightening. It leads to maybe the best scenes in the book where the prince tries to make up to the fish who keeps moping. But Li Yu figures out his own feelings in the end and making out with the prince doesn’t sound so bad after all. If only he could stay as a human longer for them to take matters further.

There isn’t as much court intrigue as in the first book, but the other princes fighting to become the crown prince still cause Prince Jing constant trouble. Prince Jing deals with them with the help of his fish. And he’s starting to think that he should try for the crown himself too. But even though he manages to please his father the emperor, there’s no reward. Instead, there’s a great change for Jing and his fish. The book ends there.

This was such a bowl of cotton candy, silly and cute, with occasional darker moments to balance things out. Prince Jing’s amusement with his lover trying to hide his fishness, and secretly helping him, and Li Yu’s obliviousness is fun to follow. There are many silly moments when Li Yu earnestly tries to please the prince, only to make a mess. They are so much fun together. It seems Li Yu will be successful in his overall mission of preventing Prince Jing from becoming a tyrant, but there’s still a lot to come. We’ll see how things go in the next book.

The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish vol. 1 by Xue Shan Fei Hu: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

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

I bought this book solely on the title, The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish. I had to find out how that could possibly be a romance. I hoped for a bonkers story. What I got was rather sweet.

Li Yu is an 18-year-old man from modern China who has been reading a historical novel about a tyrant who butchers his way on the throne. Next thing he knows, he wakes up in the book’s world as a humble carp who is about to be eaten, first as a soup and then by a cat. Only a chance in the form of the fifth prince Mu Tianchi, also called Prince Jing, saves him from that fate. And that’s not all. Li Yu is part of a computer game where the system gives him tasks. His main task is to stop Prince Jing from becoming a tyrant. If he succeeds, he can become a human again.

Prince Jing is twenty and the only surviving son by the empress and therefore of higher birth than the other princes, but he’s mute and so isn’t considered a successor for the throne. But he is the tyrant who will take the throne by force. Armed with his knowledge of the story from the book and his cute antics as a fish, Li Yu sets out to complete the tasks given to him. As a reward, he gets all sorts of useful things. One of them is the ability to turn into a human for an hour each day.

The story is mostly about palace intrigue. The second and third princes compete for the throne and they’re not above treachery and tricks. But thanks to Li Yu, their plans go wrong one after another. He ends up changing Prince Jing too, who spends more and more time with his fish. The prince is also hunting for a mysterious young man who shows up in his room at oddest times, only to disappear without a trace. The first volume ends when he finally figures out who the mystery man is.

Li Yu was a fun character—and a very odd fish. He can survive out of water amazingly long times, and jump out of his tank whenever he wants. Prince Jing came across rather lonely, which is mostly his own making, as he drives everyone away. His muteness isn’t a gimmick that is overcome in convenient places. He has a eunuch who speaks for him.

The man and the fish form a friendship of sorts, and the prince might even be having romantic feelings for the young man visiting his rooms. They’re vague and innocent though, and nothing more than a drunken kiss takes place. But was it the boy or the fish who did the kissing, Li Yu would very much like to know.

This was a funny, coherent, and well written story, which isn’t always the case with web novels. There are no repetitions or inconsistencies, and the pace was good. It ends with a small cliff-hanger in the middle of a scene, and I absolutely have to read more.