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Jan. 16th, 2021 03:49 pmI just finished zooming my way through the cnovel New Times, New Hell after seeing this recommendation from ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
littlerhymes.
The premise: promising developer Yu Zhengdu gets hired at a new company two months before graduating, where he immediately demands to sign the one-year contract right away to ensure his benefits come through, despite the HR manager's attempts to convince him that he should maybe give the company a test run first.
Ten minutes later it is revealed that the company he has just contracted to work for is a.) Hell (in charge of human reincarnation); b.) totally lacking in other human employees, everyone else is ghosts; c.) deeply underfunded with almost no development budget; d.) run by a ghost king named Shang Que who is very handsome but also does not fully understand that the new developer is not here to fix his personal computer when it freezes up from running ten video games at once
YU ZHENGDU: okay well thank you for the opportunity but I think I might like to quit, actually, I prefer a working environment where my colleagues don't habitually pop their ghostly eyes out of their head
HR MANAGER: well ... the thing about hell contracts is .... you can't really break them without severe repercussions? We're VERY sorry we DID try to warn you!
So, with no other choice, Yu Zhengdu rolls up his sleeves and sets about a mission to singlehandedly revamp the company's technological setup, get all his new ghost coworkers off Excel and working in a functional application, and set up a reliable income stream so they can get some working servers and hire a project manager.
Fortunately, ghost king Shang Que is perfectly willing to let his hot new employee convince him of the value of modern technology and the importance of reliable development funding; as the novel goes on, he reluctantly puts himself on a video game budget, starts taking MBA classes in order to become better at corporate management, and becomes an ardent tech evangelist. Growth!
The novel is much more episodic than most of the other cnovels I've read; there's a bit of an overarching plot, but mostly it's bouncing from ghost problem to ghost problem which our protagonists resolve with a little bit of Shang Que's terrifying ghost king reputation and a lot of Yu Zhengdu's cheerful Big Tech optimism. Let's disrupt the Daoist cultivation industry! Everything can be solved with an algorithm and universal WiFi! It's very charming and very funny and often very relatable and also about every other chapter I found myself mentally screaming they needed to hire an ethicist immediately, had anyone in the cast ever taken a training on replication of inherent bias?
I'm also not in any way qualified to talk about the way that the book deals with the the conflicts between contemporary socialism and traditional beliefs -- the central premise for why Hell is broke and needs a developer to begin with is that the traditional heaven/hell system and all the gods collapsed during the Cultural Revolution. ( Some mildly spoilery thoughts that I'm not qualified to have! )
That said, every instance of ghosts and little gods gleefully adapting to the internet age, demanding that the devs add a social messaging function to their shiny new reincarnation app, proudly advertising ghost company benefits, accidentally becoming social media stars beloved by young and old alike ("They are very Buddhist, but also very rock!"), is consistently a delight and I think at least once a chapter I would turn and force Beth to listen to me read an exceptionally entertaining sentence out loud.
The romance is also very funny, low-key and low-angst; Yu Zhengdu is so chill and generally entertained by Shang Que's whole vibe that moments that could be embarrassing or lead to conflict just kind of bounce off him. ( mild relationship arc spoilers )
Also, it is impossible not to love Peppa, the adorable ghost child they end up adopting who eventually reincarnates as a much-beloved, deeply horrible, superintelligent goose. Shang Que is a very responsible parent! Before she hatches, he makes sure to play her Mozart for fifteen minutes a day so she can reach her full potential!
Anyway: absolutely recommended, I enjoyed it very much, please come back and talk to me about the ethical issues of removing people's memories of their past lives by automatically setting a tracker to find and delete a line of code on the back end!
littlerhymes.The premise: promising developer Yu Zhengdu gets hired at a new company two months before graduating, where he immediately demands to sign the one-year contract right away to ensure his benefits come through, despite the HR manager's attempts to convince him that he should maybe give the company a test run first.
Ten minutes later it is revealed that the company he has just contracted to work for is a.) Hell (in charge of human reincarnation); b.) totally lacking in other human employees, everyone else is ghosts; c.) deeply underfunded with almost no development budget; d.) run by a ghost king named Shang Que who is very handsome but also does not fully understand that the new developer is not here to fix his personal computer when it freezes up from running ten video games at once
YU ZHENGDU: okay well thank you for the opportunity but I think I might like to quit, actually, I prefer a working environment where my colleagues don't habitually pop their ghostly eyes out of their head
HR MANAGER: well ... the thing about hell contracts is .... you can't really break them without severe repercussions? We're VERY sorry we DID try to warn you!
So, with no other choice, Yu Zhengdu rolls up his sleeves and sets about a mission to singlehandedly revamp the company's technological setup, get all his new ghost coworkers off Excel and working in a functional application, and set up a reliable income stream so they can get some working servers and hire a project manager.
Fortunately, ghost king Shang Que is perfectly willing to let his hot new employee convince him of the value of modern technology and the importance of reliable development funding; as the novel goes on, he reluctantly puts himself on a video game budget, starts taking MBA classes in order to become better at corporate management, and becomes an ardent tech evangelist. Growth!
The novel is much more episodic than most of the other cnovels I've read; there's a bit of an overarching plot, but mostly it's bouncing from ghost problem to ghost problem which our protagonists resolve with a little bit of Shang Que's terrifying ghost king reputation and a lot of Yu Zhengdu's cheerful Big Tech optimism. Let's disrupt the Daoist cultivation industry! Everything can be solved with an algorithm and universal WiFi! It's very charming and very funny and often very relatable and also about every other chapter I found myself mentally screaming they needed to hire an ethicist immediately, had anyone in the cast ever taken a training on replication of inherent bias?
I'm also not in any way qualified to talk about the way that the book deals with the the conflicts between contemporary socialism and traditional beliefs -- the central premise for why Hell is broke and needs a developer to begin with is that the traditional heaven/hell system and all the gods collapsed during the Cultural Revolution. ( Some mildly spoilery thoughts that I'm not qualified to have! )
That said, every instance of ghosts and little gods gleefully adapting to the internet age, demanding that the devs add a social messaging function to their shiny new reincarnation app, proudly advertising ghost company benefits, accidentally becoming social media stars beloved by young and old alike ("They are very Buddhist, but also very rock!"), is consistently a delight and I think at least once a chapter I would turn and force Beth to listen to me read an exceptionally entertaining sentence out loud.
The romance is also very funny, low-key and low-angst; Yu Zhengdu is so chill and generally entertained by Shang Que's whole vibe that moments that could be embarrassing or lead to conflict just kind of bounce off him. ( mild relationship arc spoilers )
Also, it is impossible not to love Peppa, the adorable ghost child they end up adopting who eventually reincarnates as a much-beloved, deeply horrible, superintelligent goose. Shang Que is a very responsible parent! Before she hatches, he makes sure to play her Mozart for fifteen minutes a day so she can reach her full potential!
Anyway: absolutely recommended, I enjoyed it very much, please come back and talk to me about the ethical issues of removing people's memories of their past lives by automatically setting a tracker to find and delete a line of code on the back end!
