skygiants

My e-reader died on me three days into my time in Vermont, after I had carefully and lovingly loaded it up with good vacation reads; in response I sulkily refused to pick up a physical book for most of the rest of my time there and instead spent the next few days reading through Devil Venerable Also Wants To Know on my phone.

The titular Devil Venerable Wenren È, the feared leader of a demonic cultivator sect, who, at the beginning of the novel, receives from a mysterious source a copy of Abusive Romance: You Are The Unchanging One In My Heart. This tome chronicles the adventures of a virtuous young lady cultivator who undergoes various trials as a result of her love for her beloved but apparently deeply unreliable sect brother:

An overview of the specifics would be false accusations, misunderstandings, Baili Qingmiao being imprisoned, being abused, being poisoned, being hunted down, Hè Wenzhao marrying someone else, several important supporting male characters being wholeheartedly devoted to Baili Qingmiao, protecting and cherishing her, but Baili Qingmiao only loving Hè Wenzhao, ignoring everyone else’s goodwill, insistent on finding Hè Wenzhao and marrying him, then after being hurt by her enemies or fellow disciples, another male character would save her, and after recovering she would run off to be abused again.

In the novel, Wenren È shows up as one of the secondary leads, who falls in love with Baili Qingmiao, sacrifices his life for her, and uses his final words to command his second-in-command Yin Hanjiang to protect her, after which Yin Hanjiang promptly undergoes qi deviation and becomes the story's major antagonist.

Wenren È, the reader, finds all of this both concerning and confusing: he does not understand anyone's behavior in this book, certainly not his own or Yin Hanjiang's and definitely not Baili Qingmiao's? The book seems to present her as intelligent and talented, so why would she not simply dump Hè Wenzhao's ass? Therefore, he embarks upon a quest to a.) rework the story so that neither he nor Yin Hanjiang need to meet tragic ends but b.) and perhaps more importantly, attempt to understand the perplexing behavior chronicled within. Surely if he just investigates and asks some straightforward questions of the key players involved, some logical explanations will be revealed!

The most endearing part of this book, to me, is the resultant series of weird mentorships that results as Wenren È commits to Project Get Baili Qingmiao To Forget About Romance And Realize Her Full Potential On The Path Of Indifference Already. Other major characters who get roped into this project and become reluctantly invested in Baili Qingmiao's journey:

- Shu Yanyan, a succubus and also the smartest person on Wenren È's team, who puts in a lot of hard work seducing Hè Wenzhao despite finding him very boring and for what! well, for schemes, mostly
- Qui Congxue, an evil but charmingly straightforward demonic cultivator who gets accidentally saved and de-skeletonized by Baili Qingmaio and is absolutely furious to learn that all her hard work following the hungry ghost path has been undone now that her flesh has grown back over her lovingly cultivated skeleton corpse
- Zhongli Qian, the third lead of Abusive Romance and the smartest person in the entire story, a noble scholar whom Wenren È optimistically kidnaps in hopes of throwing him at Baili Qingmiao in order to distract her from Hè Wenzhao; IMO this is the funniest subplot in the book, I'm longing to describe Wenren È's Attempts to Create Romance From First Principles so if anyone would like more details I will gladly put them in rot13 in a comment

Obviously of course Wenren È also along the way discovers that Yin Hanjiang is in love with him and they eventually have a touching romance. The romance is fine. I'm much more interested and invested in Wenren È than I am in Yan Hanjiang; also, I personally prefer the early parts of the romance, where Wenren È's Investigations into Human Nature cause him to have revelations like 'oh possibly I should encourage my second-in-command to have 'hobbies' that aren't 'standing grimly outside my tent at all times'?', to the later journeys through the Most Tormented And Obsessive Parts of Yan Hanjiang's Soul, but this is of course a personal preference and I'm sure many people will enjoy that the most.

I also do find very interesting the version of cultivator cosmology presented in this book, where both the 'righteous' and demonic sects are engaged in stealing power from the heavens, and every so often they have to engage in a big battle of opposing forces just to whittle down each other's numbers so ordinary people get a chance to thrive. Baili Qingmiao herself is the reincarnation of the goddess of destruction, who creates plagues/earthquakes/fire/etc so new growth can begin, and the book very much operates on a theme of balance and necessary disaster; I love where Baili Qingmiao's journey ends up in context of this and found the ending really satisfying.