(no subject)

[skygiants]

Reading on your phone on the beach is not ideal, but nonetheless I did in fact spend much of my time in Hawaii reading through the entirety of Heaven's Official Blessings, the third and longest web novel by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation fame.

This is definitely the most ambitious of the three books she's finished; on the one hand I don't entirely think it lives up to the scope of those ambitions, but on the other hand that's partly because my expectations were raised quite high by the ways in which it appeals directly to my interests.

On the first page we are introduced to our protagonist, Xie Lian, crown prince of Xian Le, who interrupts an important religious ceremony in order to rescue a small child falling off a building.

ADVISORS: You must show your repentance to the gods!
XIE LIAN: Saving people isn’t something bad. How could the gods fault me because I did the right thing?
ADVISORS: And if the gods do decide to blame you?
XIE LIAN: Then the Heavens would be the ones who are wrong. Why should the people who are right apologize to the ones who are wrong?
ME: oh no ... defiance of the heavens via Extreme Ethics is my greatest narrative weakness .... and I love him .....

FAST FORWARD EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS

Xie Lian, Theological Prodigy, has now ascended to godhood, descended in unbelievably tragic circumstances, ascended, descended, spent several centuries as a trash collector, re-ascended, and is now an absolute divine embarrassment. He has no spiritual power or money. When he enters the divine groupchat (of course the gods have a groupchat) he texts like a grandpa. He is almost completely beyond being embarrassed by anything in this world and spends a lot of his time encouraging everyone around him to just chill out; he's spent eight hundred years collecting trash, we can all have a little perspective and understanding!

ME: oh no ... I love him even more now ....

Shortly after his third ascension, Xie Lan meets San Lang, a mysterious and mysteriously powerful young man who - it turns out, in short order - is also Hua Cheng, the world's most prominent demonic ghost, who - it is revealed to the reader, in relatively short order - was one of Xie Lan's worshippers during his first bout of godhood eight hundred years ago. The rest of the gods are, naturally, concerned that the king of Hell City appears to be stalking Xie Lan. Xie Lan is just happy to have made a new friend! San Lang may be a sinister ghost but he's always been very helpful to him, so why should he judge? It's very awkward when Heaven sends him to break a prisoner out of Hua Cheng's dungeon, he really feels bad about it, of course he's going to do his duty but it's an unfortunately rude way to treat a friend and he hopes his pal will forgive him!

(The romance in this one is fascinating because on Xie Lan's side it's a pleasant low-key friends-to-lovers, while on Hua Cheng's side it is passionate religious fervor of 800 years' standing; the weird and intense line between worship and love is not a direct line to my id but I feel fairly sure it is a direct line to someone's!)

Other important characters include (but are not limited to):
- Shi Qing Xuan, a cheerful, generous, gender-shifting wind god, whose good luck is about to run out
- Ling Wen, the heaven's most important female god, a hyper-competent bureaucrat with a permanent stress headache
- Mu Qing, Xie Lan's former manservant, now a divine general with a chip on his shoulder, who (as Xie Lan earnestly explains) might spit in someone's drink but probably wouldn't poison it
- Feng Xin, Xie Lan's other former assistant, an earnest and forthright soul with a bad guilt complex who can't go ten words without dropping an F-bomb
- Quan Yi Zhen, essentially Fei Lu from Nirvana in Fire if someone had had the bad judgment to make him divine
- Ban Yue, an unfortunate ghost whom Xie Lan used to babysit when she was a little girl; spends much of the book in a pickle jar
- Qi Rong, who combines all the worst qualities of a mass-murdering demon and your incredibly embarrassing little cousin
- several small children whom Xie Lan does his best to care for over the course of the novel, except when plot interrupts and he forgets for a little bit.

(alias_sqbr has a much more thorough cast list as well as content warnings and extensive and enjoyable recaps. I will note that a.) there are probably about twice the characters as in Grandmaster, but b.) like three times the female characters! and not only is the ratio better but they pretty much all make it to the end of the story! ... admittedly some of them are already dead at the time the story begins but they're not going to let that stop them, ask me about my favorite angry prostitute ghost and her terrible demon baby.)

Over the course of the next many chapters, the head god, Jun Wu, asks Xie Lan to investigate a series of unfortunate-for-the-heavens events; somehow, Xie Lan's investigations always end up exposing embarrassing behavior from the other powerful gods, each new incident more dramatic and ethically complicated than the last. From the beginning, the narrative is concerned with questions of ethics, divinity, violence and necessity: in a situation where the survival of one party seems to require violence to another, is a third solution possible, or will attempting to save everyone just end up harming everyone? What is the responsibility of a god to their people, or of people to their god? Is there any inherent justice to the divine cosmology, or is the entire system fundamentally flawed?

These are obviously difficult questions to answer! But I do wish the book had gone a little further in answering them, all the same. The best part of the ending by far, for me, was the moment when Shi Qing Xuan -- a mortal ex-god who was never supposed to be a god to begin with -- leads a group of beggars in the ritual to save the city, because nobody else will do it. And the other gods come down to help, eventually, but the beggars at that point know that they were there to help before the gods were and they're never really going to look at the gods the same way again.

That moment is so good, and I loved it, and I wanted it to be the climax so badly, and I did not really care about the several chapters afterwards of Xie Lan fighting Jun Yu --

(-- okay, I did care about Xie Lan mending his relationship with Mu Qing, and I also have opinions about how that played out, but that's a whole separate story)

-- because once the story becomes about defeating Jun Yu, it's just about removing a bad actor from the system, while most of the rest of the story has been about the structural flaws in the entire cosmology. And I don't necessarily want a straight-up revolution in heaven (...OK that's a lie, I always want revolution in heaven, but alias_sqbr also makes some very good points about why revolution in heaven is not necessarily the right ending for this story) but for me it was a little narratively unsatisfying to have the story hover just on the point of declaring that virtue is in humans and not the heavens, and then just sort of glide over that declaration, get rid of one bad head god, and leave the entire system that allowed that bad god to retain power in place without any further destabilization. If those narrative beats had just been reversed, I would have been so much happier!

All that said, I do love both the Rain Master and Ling Wen very much and the fact that Ling Wen's punishment for being kind of evil for a bit is to keep the entire flawed system running, permanent stress-headache and all, is very funny and narratively satisfying to me.

Comments

[sovay]

Xie Lian, Theological Prodigy, has now ascended to godhood, descended in unbelievably tragic circumstances, ascended, descended, spent several centuries as a trash collector, re-ascended, and is now an absolute divine embarrassment.

Great; I like him already.

What is the responsibility of a god to their people, or of people to their god? Is there any inherent justice to the divine cosmology, or is the entire system fundamentally flawed?

Okay, so I'm guessing that the author of this novel is not Jewish, but I can also see how there's a readymade market here.

Talk to me about the angry prostitute ghost and her terrible demon baby!

[skygiants]

SHE'S GREAT. We first meet her as a dead middle-aged ghost when she accosts Xie Lian in Hell City (he tells the whole city he's impotent in order to turn her down politely without embarrassing her) and then much, MUCH later, to everyone's shock, it turns out that a.) she was one of the highest ladies in his court before his entire country fell b.) much later, after becoming a prostitute to survive, she then had a whole tragic romance with his former second-in-command that Xie Lian entirely missed (which resulted in the demon baby, although the second-in-command doesn't know anything about it because she was too proud to tell him and kicked it out before it happened). When brought to heaven to identify the divine father of her demon baby, she dramatically accuses the entire court in turn, turning the whole thing into a sideshow; she then steals the demon baby back from heavenly custody and goes on the lam. The second-in-command spends the rest of the book chasing after her to try and take care of her and remand the demon baby, and every time she haughtily informs him that unless he plans to parent the demon baby, she is absolutely not interested, and escapes with panache.

...and then during the grand finale, the demon baby starts fighting with a whole bunch of other ghosts and the demon baby's divine dad, parental instincts finally aroused, shouts "HOW FUCKING SHAMEFUL! A BUNCH OF ADULTS BULLYING A CHILD!" and charges to his rescue. My heart was warmed.

[sovay]

and the demon baby's divine dad, parental instincts finally aroused, shouts "HOW FUCKING SHAMEFUL! A BUNCH OF ADULTS BULLYING A CHILD!" and charges to his rescue.

That is intensely heartwarming.

[skygiants]

By the end of the book they haven't sorted out their family situation - she still feels too weird about being a middle-aged ghost in the divine palace of an immortally youthful ex, so she takes the demon baby and sneaks away - but I'm optimistic that they'll at least figure out some kind of shared custody in the future!

[pengwern]

Hello \o/ long time listener first time caller, so first thank you for all your reviews! I've found many excellent books thanks to your recs \o/ Especially the Sherwood Ring. a constant joy in my life.

also I...it honestly Did Not Register that the generic mythology setting of gods/believers would go down like a sodium nugget when dropped on top of readers with different religious backgrounds - there's probably something to be said about the shifting of priorities between gods as the target of your devotion vs the confucian chain of sovereign, family, teacher, etc., and how you don't really get people of specific religious faith other than Buddhists as protagonists rather than the background peasantry who get led by the nose, BUT that's outside the scope of this comment and also shows me for somebody who hasn't been reading the fic.

I do agree that it doesn't go far enough, with Lingwen right back behind the desk and mile high document stacks, but I'm pleasantly surprised it got this far -- the selection of mythology fic I've seen has...actually, either the gods are window dressing and never touches on belief except as the currency system for their magic, or it goes super pessimistic about breaking out of the inevitable cycle of a corrupt Heaven. Early chinese webnovels are scary and end in tragedy all over >_< (If we're talking rebellion against the heavens, I think that cn fandom might be Sun Wukong/Erlang Shen, two somewhat rebellious deities -- there's several adaptations smushed together that get deeper into this)

So TGCF didn't click as god vs believer, because the heavenly system lacked that inevitability I got from Sun Wukong fic, but it did feel like one of those...Incredibles type deconstructed superhero narratives. From there those big questions the book posed unwound fairly naturally, although I'm coming back to wonder if I did like the "final attack being an undignified skill Xie Lian picked up in those 800 years." On one hand I would have cried if I were the type to tear up, otoh not sure if I think the "suffering was all worth it in the end" works for me outside of the central sweeping romance?

I am thankful for the relationship dynamic between Hua Cheng and Xie Lian, as I put off reading this because I thought it would be a standard bingjiao male lead like Luo Binghe, given the character set up (SV was fine but lbr he's typical), but Hua Cheng suffered through eight hundred years of pining -- and used it to CONSIDER WHAT HIS DIANXIA NEEDS IN A PARTNER, not what his own desires are. Which means I feel great disregarding what the epilogues suggest about their sex life! my disapproval of CN smut overall will have to wait for a different time.

Otherwise I'm also incredibly fond of all the side characters, especially Ling Wen and Ban Yue - calling someone you need to arrest to help in coordinating their own arrest in real time is Iconique, a true queen, also Ban Yue and Pei Ming's interactions in the later part of the book cracked me up since he's being standard patriarchal but his target is a very, very dead young lady who leaves snakes and scorpions in her wake, how did he THINK he wouldn't end up poisoned.

...wow I still have a ton of stuff to ramble on about tgcf that isn't just Hualian invented love. But drink for every time a MXTX work includes a makeout inside that most romantic of venues, a coffin.

[skygiants]

hello and welcome!! I am so glad to hear you've found good books this way (The Sherwood Ring is SUCH A DELIGHT.)

Also thank you so much for leaving this comment because I'm obviously lacking a lot of context about the specific kind of mythological setting that MXTX is interrogating here, and I've been really curious (as with Scum Villain) about what the standard tropes are and what her choices mean is comparison.

I also loved the final attack being Xie Lian's ridiculous street busker skill, but, hmm, I agree, I don't think the 'suffering was all worth it' really lands for me either; I'm extremely glad for Xie Lian and Hua Chen but, like, the central question for the book for me has always been whether Xie Lian's fundamental belief that there must be a third way out of an impossible moral dilemma is viable/justifiable when we see it cause more suffering for himself and others over and over again, and I wanted ... well, honestly in my soul I wanted a little more solid confirmation that he's right and that he should keep doing it, because at heart I am as idealistic as very early Xie Lian, but more intellectually I just wanted the question returned to at all in the wake of the reveal that it broke Jun Wu.

I ALSO am very grateful for the present-day relationship dynamic! It's really kind of a delight that there's essentially no conflict between them interpersonally; they're both so determined to be supportive no matter what and it's very sweet. (though admittedly I also find it hilarious and understandable that Xie Lan's friends see the ROOM FULL OF OBSESSIVE STATUARY and are like "....WE HAVE! CONCERNS!!!" I too would have concerns, they don't know how desperately hard Hua Chen has worked on Being Cool Next Time He Meets God over the past 800 years.)

BAN YUE IS SO GOOD, I love her tiny voice and her murder snakes, also the moment Xie Lian accidentally calls Ling Wen to alert her about her own arrest maybe made me laugh harder than anything else in the book! please feel free to ramble more about tgcf! :D

[pengwern]

sorry for the late reply >_< I've been traveling and it would have been a good time for a tgcf reread on my flight if there was wifi. I did have some ebooks of the Hilary Tamar books on my phone though! Every one of them continues wonderful.

I'd planned a few posts on subgenres of webnovels, and did manage a summary of the genres I read in, but ran out of steam. one day I'll recap my favorite cnovels, including the truly beautiful, amazing, wonderful one where one man fails to learn his BF's name until chapter 45.

So there is a mythology subgenre to the fantasy novels given the tradition of works like Journey to the West, Investiture of the Gods, all those fox furries/ghost banging contemporary urban fantasy written a few centuries ago -- I feel works like TGCF grew fairly naturally out of that kind of pantheon. Many of them uses canonical...characters, resulting in fics like "I ran away with the Lord of Primordial Beginning's baby!" (A further genre divide: silly comedy, or Bad End stuff that hails knives on the poor unsuspecting reader's head, or going from the first to the second rip.) TGCF is slightly unusual in using invented deities, but ones following the pattern of the real ones -- think Percy Jackson type books, drawing on traditions and making stuff up because it looks cooler. The line between this and cultivation novels, which is the genre SV and Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation are in, blur really easily, because Daoism is basically the background for all historical fantasy! Add in a pinch of Buddhism and you're set. (If we're talking about scum villain alone, it looks similar to literally half of all cultivation novels I've seen.)

Right they....never returned to that question. Idk, sometimes the Heavens as a metaphor for the government (which also gets slapped with a celestial adjective) is depressingly obvious.

Coasting in with one face out of the many that you're rumored to have doesn't sound like the height of candidness, Blood Rain Tanhua!! I'm honestly charmed that the epilogues has the statuary pair off too >_> even if it would definitely set some alarms off if he wasn't an eight hundred year old ghost who's lasted this long on sheer burning passion alone.

Anyway I'm sure there are fathoms of fannish attention paid to this already but the READY MADE SOCIAL MEDIA AUs. Imagine the drama that a random passerby god could popcorn.gif over. THIS IS THE "CELLPHONES....BAD" plot I want.

[skygiants]

Reading Hilary Tamar is also ALWAYS a good choice, I'm still jealous of the me from two years ago who had not read any yet and still had all those joyous discoveries in front of her.

All this is a really interesting summary, thank you! I'm familiar-ish with Journey to the West, mostly through osmosis through other retellings, some relatively formative (hi Laurence Yep), but that's really my main exposure to this particular tradition so trying to pick out what's standard, what's invented, and what's interrogatory is tricky!

They did not! Or, I mean, they sort of did but in a way that doesn't really highlight it; there's the breaking-the-cycle-of-revenge parallels thing that plays out a little through both Lan Qian Qiu and He Xuan but again very understated at the end because we're all too focused on kicking Jun Wu's ass, and there's that moment where Xie Lan is like "don't worry babe I'm not going to try and solve the problem with endless useless self-sacrifice anymore, that doesn't work," which feels like a relevant moment but then we don't get a different answer either. idk, I think I fixated maybe a little too hard on "why should the people who are right apologize to the Heavens if they're wrong?" at the very beginning and wanted a circle round on the fact that sometimes the Heavens are like "this shitty thing should happen" and you can just say no to that! >.>

THANKS, I WANT IT TOO NOW. honestly just the version of TGCF that's entirely through public divine posts and chatlogs ... and the tragedy of Ling Wen's poor head sysadmin.

[littlerhymes]

The downfall of Jun Wu feels like an anticlimax to me too, like even just from a, like momentum standpoint it doesn't feel like a culmination in the way it should, like we really spend a long time getting to this point, it should feel more pointy?

But I think the ending works for me better in other ways. Maybe I got emo about the idea of believing in someone so completely that you can move mountains. MAYBE.

The best bits for me by far were in book 3. NUMEROUS REDACTED SPOILERS about people who turn out to be other people! People who you thought were people turn out to be DEAD. KISSING INSIDE A COFFIN ON A TURBULENT SEA!

Also shout out to XL's terrible cooking, what a delight.

[skygiants]

I think the whole thing would work better for me if the pacing was a little different, honestly -- like, there are a lot of amazing elements, the protective circle, the GIANT ICON OF XIE LIAN powered by Hua Cheng's belief, the fact that Xie Lian needs to use what he learned from his time at the very bottom of the ladder -- but there's so much fighting in between those things, and the actual pummeling feels really outside the point. It shouldn't matter if Xie Lian and Hua Chen together can fight better than Jun Wu, it should matter that they're more ethical! >.>

OMG BOOK THREE. Absolutely the best book!!! It was very frustrating to me that I couldn't scream about the entire Shi Qing Xuan arc as a recruitment tactic because spoilers, but AHHHHH. (What I actually want to read most is lots of postcanon Shi Qing Xuan fic about them and He Xuan and their beggar friends and how Shi Qing Xuan is still more or less better at being a god than all the people who are actually still gods. Or maybe just better at being a person and maybe that's better than being good at being a god!)

tl;dr i'm very excited for the donghua, I can't wait for someone to make the first tgcf vid set to Smash Mouth's "I'm A Believer."

[littlerhymes]

I can't wait for someone to make the first tgcf vid set to Smash Mouth's "I'm A Believer."

Oh my god... You have spoken it into existence and must take full responsibility! (I too am very excited for the donghua, it looks so pretty!)

[annotated_em]

Oh no. Oh NO. Where can I find this, I must stuff it in my headhole IMMEDIATELY.

[skygiants]

The first twenty chapters can be read here and everything else is in a Google folder here! PLEASE ENJOY.

[marginaliana]

This sounds amaaaazing and I would love to give it a go - I think your drive is missing the first two parts of book 1, however!

[skygiants]

Yeah, for whatever reason, the Google Drive translation is missing the first 20 chapters! They can be found here. (I think the plan is to include them eventually for completionism, but since they're available in a couple other places the Google Drive translators don't seem to think there's a rush.)

[shadaras]

I had been avoiding reading any of her other stuff, because reading mdzs ate my time so well, but this sounds like it includes a terrible amount of my narrative catnip and I'm SAD because now I'll need to read it.

(this is not a bad thing at all really)

[skygiants]

A conversation with my girlfriend, before we left for the trip on which I read the book:

ME: I'm thinking of having the next book by the person who wrote Grandmaster as my vacation reading! It will make the plane flights go so fast!
HER: That sounds like a good -
ME: But maybe that's a bad idea because I know as soon as I start reading it I'm going to obsessively zoom through it and then I won't want to do any of the other things we have planned in Hawaii because I'll be reading instead.
HER: ....

[shadaras]

YES EXACTLY

that is the precise mood in which I am thinking about this, especially since I have a cross-country trip back to CA over Thanksgiving, so... airplanes and airports really are good for doing a bunch of reading...

[skygiants]

They really are! And for me having something I'm really looking forward to reading always turns my attitude about travel from 'ugh, airplanes' to 'YES, UNINTERRUPTED MARATHON TIME.' I will look forward to your thoughts. >:D

[shadaras]

god tempting me to post about it once I'm done is so evil of you, aha :)

I am resisting getting started on it until it's travel time! But I am excited for Sunday, when my airplane journey begins.

(also this is definitely replacing my OTHER option for airplane marathon, which was listening to The Magnus Archives; I think this is the easier one, since I generally find auditory processing terrible on airplanes.)

[skygiants]

I always encourage people to post about everything. >.> I want to know what people think!

(Heads up, as I said to stultiloquentia below, that because of the way the Google Drive is formatted, I ended up having to essentially just save a bunch of Google docs to my phone in 'read offline' mode, but that ended up working okay!)

Yeah, I always want to listen to podcasts on planes but the surrounding noise is always SO loud that it's never a super successful proposition. On trains it's great!

[shadaras]

Yeah... I've sort of figured I'd need to do that, which also means I'm going to try and read through the stuff that isn't on the gdrive before I start flying so that I don't need to deal with airplane internet.

That makes sense! I've almost never been on trains, because usually the distances I'm going are car distances (up to a few hours) or airplane distances (see: cross-country flights that have been a standard part of my life for like a decade).

[skygiants]

Train travel is fun if you ever get the chance! A lot of my most frequent long-ish-distance trips are up and down the east coast, and if I can possibly arrange my schedule so that it's possible to take the six-hour train rather than the hour-long flight I absolutely will because it's just so much more pleasant. The quiet car is one of humanity's greatest inventions.

[shadaras]

It sounds great! I do hope I'll have a chance to do train travel like that sometime. :)

(amusingly, a good friend of mine decided to take the trains all the way across the country when he was visiting his parents, and it's like a 4-day journey? I'll hopefully be seeing him while I'm in CA, so I'll need to ask him how that was...)

[larryhammer]

Okay, I'm reading this one NEXT, even though I just read the first chapter of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, and the only reason I switched instead to an LCD reincarnated-into-game-world fantasy is I was fevered at the time. THIS ONE.

[skygiants]

I am EXTREMELY excited for your thoughts on this, PLEASE REPORT BACK.

[larryhammer]

I will, once I shake off this cold.

[coffeeandink]

For me the part of the climax that hits home is when love/faith/800 years of obsession bursts Xie Lian's cursed fetters and we find out how strong he really is when he isn't holding back. Now that I think of it, it is very Captain Marvel, although that is not the Western pop culture comparison I started this comment to make!

The Western pop culture comparison I started this comment to make: I've been thinking about the requirements for godhood vs. The Good Place's points system. And the problems of very rules-based systems of evaluation that don't take context into account.

I think I don't mind the lack of Power to the People so much because the gods are very clearly just the people with too much power, but I may change my mind about this. The book is also fairly pessimistic about the people, to be fair.

I wonder if everyone in Heaven owing Ghost King Hua Cheng money is some kind of commentary on Chinese politics that I don't have the context to get.

[skygiants]

Ha, it IS very Captain Marvel! It's funny, that moment didn't really hit me at all - there were a couple power-of-love moments at the end that definitely landed for me, but I don't really care about how powerful/strong Xie Lian is, I care about how ethical he is! Which sort of ties into wanting more time strategizing how to save civilians from face plague and less time pummeling Jun Wu.

I also definitely found myself thinking about the Good Place's points system -- especially in the context of Shi Qing Xuan and He Xuan and switching fates and who is or is not "supposed" to become a god (it's a little bit Real Eleanor and Fake Eleanor from S1!). And Shi Qing Xuan is pretty clearly a more ethical person than Shi Wu Du, so what makes Shi Wu Du the sibling destined for godhood? Are all the successful gods just people who caught the eye of other successful gods long ago, one big pile of bureaucratic nepotism? (Which might be another commentary on Chinese politics that I don't have context for...)

I do also think there's something significant about the fact that -- with the exception of the Green Goblin who everyone is very quick to point out doesn't really count anyway -- all the demonic Calamities are pretty much just gods who rejected the divine system. Hua Cheng literally ascended, He Xuan was supposed to ascend but got his fate switched and then just replaced another god anyway, and, obviously, Jun Wu ...

[stultiloquentia]

This sounds like ideal airplane reading. Bookmarking for December!

[skygiants]

It very much was for me - I'll look forward to your thoughts! :D

(Heads up that because of the way the Google Drive is formatted, I ended up having to essentially just save a bunch of Google docs to my phone in 'read offline' mode, but that ended up working okay!)

[brownbetty]

Hey, thanks to you and alias_sqbr I've finally finished this monster and I'm feeling some kind of way. I love this relationship best of all of MXTX's stuff, probably, because it's honestly so low stress the way that Xie Lan is just from the beginning "I enjoy this person, and am gonna spend time with him, even though he's almost definitely some kinda super-demon." (Hua Cheng's feelings are lot more stressful if I think about them for a 1/4 of a second SO I DON'T.) There's never any "a terrible misunderstanding will rip them apart!", (even when it might, reasonably) though, which, I'm extremely grateful for.

Sorta sad for MXTX that she had to go from Scum Villain's "Here are all my kinks: A Guided Tour" to this where, like, not that there is no kink, but it's barely a simmer.

Rain Master Huang is extremely my jam. I hope there's fanart.

[skygiants]

It honestly kills me that I can't just tell everyone Rain Master Huang's backstory to sell them on the novel right in the post, because technically it's a spoiler and a great reveal but also! it's just so good!!!

The romance in MZDS works for me better as a romance -- I feel like the emphasis there is on the way that both of them actively make each other better as people, while the emphasis in Heavenly Blessings is more about unconditional love and understanding (I'd dig it more if we ever actually got to see Hua Cheng working through and coming to terms with his feelings for Xie Lian as a fallible person, rather than the god of his childhood; as you say, STRESSFUL) -- but Xie Lan is definitely my favorite of her protagonists and I really do love so much how chill the entire romance is from his perspective. They just like hanging out and talking about stars or swords or whatever! It's so pleasant!

Honestly one thing I really appreciate about all of MXTX's romances (except maybe Scum Villain, which is a ... special case) is that I always have a very easy time picturing the main couple just hanging out together as people, it's very clear how much they enjoy each other's company, which is often not true in romances I have read ...

[brownbetty]

I have been mentally rating the kinkiness of all MXTX's couples, and Heaven, I can honestly imagine them taking a year and a half to get past heavy petting, whereas Scum Villain, they probably got kicked out of several kink clubs with "I don't care if it's consensual! We don't Do That!"

I also want to know all about Rain Master Huang's ox. He seems neat.

[skygiants]

ACCURATE. I still can't get over how funny it is to me that in Scum Villain the straight-up sex is so ... canonically bad ..... they have to keep trying new and increasingly wild things in the desperate hope of improving the experience!

I also want to know about the ox!

[hopqer]

Quan Yi Zhen, essentially Fei Lu from Nirvana in Fire if someone had had the bad judgment to make him divine

Sputters

Ok I’m embarking on a group read of TGCF on mxtx tomorrow (today?) and I must remember to refer back to this post

[skygiants]

Ooh, thanks for letting me know about the community and group read, it'll be fun to follow along with reactions! :D

[lannamichaels]

(The romance in this one is fascinating because on Xie Lan's side it's a pleasant low-key friends-to-lovers, while on Hua Cheng's side it is passionate religious fervor of 800 years' standing; the weird and intense line between worship and love is not a direct line to my id but I feel fairly sure it is a direct line to someone's!)

ooooh, this hits a lot of things for me. :D

I've been reading fic in this fandom somewhat casually, so knowing who maybe 4 of the people are, so I also appreciated the cast list, that's very helpful :D

[skygiants]

oh god there's so many, I had a vague sense of who most of the characters were from alias_sqbr's reviews and I think if I hadn't I would have been totally lost!