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larryhammerThe last time I posted about Yue Xia Die Ying, I had just read one of her xianxia novels and really enjoyed it. Since then, I’ve read two more of her historical romances. TL,DR: two thumbs up.
The first one, Like Pearl and Jade, is a more serious, if low-key, drama with romance. Technically the female MC is a transmigrator, but this identity has zero impact on the story and is used only as a framing device. The story and romance are both quite good, and I like how the frequent small digs at the patriarchy build to (small) actions that improve the status of (some) women. This is about the same size as I Am Average and Unremarkable, or about half of Journey to the West.
The second one, though, this one is a delight. The half-again longer* The Times Spent in Pretense I can only describe as a Chinese analog of Georgette Heyer. Its tone is relatively light, despite a redonkulous number of assassination attempts,** with a sheen of satire. More to the point, the male MC is outright Heyeresque, one of her Mark II models by Heyer’s classification, and his several brothers are as eccentric as any Heyer cast.*** The female MC, meanwhile, spends most of the first half playing several roles that are funny enough in themselves, but that eventually start colliding with each other, resulting in comedy gold.
Unlike Like Pearl and Jade, its feminism is baked in from the start. The female MC’s parents are both generals and military heroes. Her mother in particular is a badass beauty, with adoring female fans who proposition her in public — behavior viewed as more déclassé than scandalous. Way less hetereonormative than usual for a straight romance from mainland China. Meanwhile the female MC’s initial life goal is to acquire an estate near the capital where she can “raise male pets,” i.e. collect a harem of consorts — and her family quietly supports this, as it’s not an unknown hobby for noblewomen, though not one that gets publicly flaunted. The differences from our history are highlighted by contrast with a neighboring kingdom with traditional NeoConfucian values, where they look down on this degenerate place (while being baffled at how happy and prosperous it is despite its grave moral lapses).
I am also greatly amused by a minor character, part of a rival’s girl posse, who makes repeated metatextual commentary based on genre tropes.
Possibly best of all, though, the female MC never fades into the background, as happens all too frequently in Chinese historical romances, but is an active plot participant all the way through the climax.
Both recommended, the second highly so.
* So about three-quarters of a Journey West.
** Spoiler: not a single assassin succeeds.
*** My favorite is the would-be artist. The female MC’s first reaction to one of his landscapes is “What on earth was this painting? A bunch of heavily inked blobs and lightly inked blobs mixing together as friends?” Which is funny enough, but eventually it comes out that everything about this scene are even more examples of pretenses.
---L.
Subject quote from …Ready For It?, Taylor Swift.
The first one, Like Pearl and Jade, is a more serious, if low-key, drama with romance. Technically the female MC is a transmigrator, but this identity has zero impact on the story and is used only as a framing device. The story and romance are both quite good, and I like how the frequent small digs at the patriarchy build to (small) actions that improve the status of (some) women. This is about the same size as I Am Average and Unremarkable, or about half of Journey to the West.
The second one, though, this one is a delight. The half-again longer* The Times Spent in Pretense I can only describe as a Chinese analog of Georgette Heyer. Its tone is relatively light, despite a redonkulous number of assassination attempts,** with a sheen of satire. More to the point, the male MC is outright Heyeresque, one of her Mark II models by Heyer’s classification, and his several brothers are as eccentric as any Heyer cast.*** The female MC, meanwhile, spends most of the first half playing several roles that are funny enough in themselves, but that eventually start colliding with each other, resulting in comedy gold.
Unlike Like Pearl and Jade, its feminism is baked in from the start. The female MC’s parents are both generals and military heroes. Her mother in particular is a badass beauty, with adoring female fans who proposition her in public — behavior viewed as more déclassé than scandalous. Way less hetereonormative than usual for a straight romance from mainland China. Meanwhile the female MC’s initial life goal is to acquire an estate near the capital where she can “raise male pets,” i.e. collect a harem of consorts — and her family quietly supports this, as it’s not an unknown hobby for noblewomen, though not one that gets publicly flaunted. The differences from our history are highlighted by contrast with a neighboring kingdom with traditional NeoConfucian values, where they look down on this degenerate place (while being baffled at how happy and prosperous it is despite its grave moral lapses).
I am also greatly amused by a minor character, part of a rival’s girl posse, who makes repeated metatextual commentary based on genre tropes.
Possibly best of all, though, the female MC never fades into the background, as happens all too frequently in Chinese historical romances, but is an active plot participant all the way through the climax.
Both recommended, the second highly so.
* So about three-quarters of a Journey West.
** Spoiler: not a single assassin succeeds.
*** My favorite is the would-be artist. The female MC’s first reaction to one of his landscapes is “What on earth was this painting? A bunch of heavily inked blobs and lightly inked blobs mixing together as friends?” Which is funny enough, but eventually it comes out that everything about this scene are even more examples of pretenses.
---L.
Subject quote from …Ready For It?, Taylor Swift.
no subject
Date: 15 July 2025 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 July 2025 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 July 2025 06:04 pm (UTC)Is not Journey to the West as a scaling factor roughly equivalent to "a single volume printing, even with a small font, will kill you if it falls on you from the topmost shelf"?
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Date: 15 July 2025 06:11 pm (UTC)Well, Journey to the West is roughly half again as long (~660k words in translation) as The Lord of the Rings (~450k), if you want a more familiar scale. My copy is a four-volume mass-market paperback box set, which is "mild ouch" rather than "deadly."
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Date: 15 July 2025 06:56 pm (UTC)Ah, OK, not so much as I was thinking; I had somehow formed the impression that Journey to the West, unabridged, was half a shelf.
no subject
Date: 15 July 2025 08:13 pm (UTC)The Mahabharata, it isn't -- a block, not a brick. FWIW, the other three Four Classic Novels are on roughly the same scale (depending, of course, on which version of A Dream of Red Mansions you use).
ETA: For my own amusement, I just checked -- the complete works of Shakespeare is about 1.75 Journeys West (Journey Wests?).
no subject
Date: 17 July 2025 10:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 17 July 2025 01:51 pm (UTC)It is! It’s really hard to count just how many pretenses are going on, sometimes simultaneously.
no subject
Date: 18 July 2025 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 18 July 2025 03:45 pm (UTC)You should try it!