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Apr. 6th, 2021 10:08 pmI've been wanting to try an f/f cnovel for a while, so last month I read Female General, Eldest Princess on the simple basis of the facts that a.) it's the one I've read most often and b.) I have never said no to a cross-dressing heroine in my life and I don't intend to start now.
The premise: teen Lin Wanyue's entire village was slaughtered by the Huns, so she's taken the identity of her dead brother 'Lin Feixing', joined the army, and dedicated her life to revenge. Because of her intelligence and her single-minded dedication, she quickly rises to prominence despite her humble origins!
Meanwhile, Li Xian, teen Imperial Princess, has dedicated her life to out-scheming her various half-siblings so that she can deliver the Imperial succession to her beloved but still moderately useless baby brother. When she encounters Lin Wanyue on a field trip to the front, it's love more or less at first sight ...
...well, it's love or at least crush for Lin Wanyue, who encounters the impeccable image of a perfect princess and is immediately ready to become the lionheart to her queen, no questions asked. Li Xian, meanwhile, sees a talented and besotted young officer with no inconvenient connections and the baby beginnings of a brilliant tactical instinct to nurture and is delighted to have discovered such a useful pawn: with a few significant nudges, she's pretty sure she can eventually place 'Lin Feixing' in a position to command the entire border, and that's that army's loyalty sorted.
(As long as Lin Feixing never finds out enough about the various morally questionable things that Li Xian has done for that loyalty to shake, obviously, but it's not like that's going to happen! What is this, amateur hour?)
I dug the course of the romance in the book: intense potentially-misplaced loyalty stuff is very much my jam and I really enjoyed the very slow and difficult shift in Li Xian and Lin Wanyue's relationship from manipulation/hero-worship to genuine partnership, as Lin Wanyue levels up in savvy and Li Xian levels down in ability to crush all her human feelings. Also, I am a simple individual who likes to see a cross-dressing general and a scheming lesbian respectively be more competent than everyone around them, and Female General, Eldest Princess gets top marks on this score.
I liked less the extremely dehumanizing depiction of the Huns (there's one sympathetic and intelligent antagonist-turned-ally at the very end of the book and before that they are more or less ravenous horde video game villains about whom Lin Wanyue has some extremely genocidal fantasies while embarked her Revenge Quest). Also the ending is ... hmm. It's a happy ending overall, it is just also OUT OF LEFT FIELD WILD AS HECK.
( ending spoilers! )
Would love recommendations for other f/f danmei if anyone has them!
The premise: teen Lin Wanyue's entire village was slaughtered by the Huns, so she's taken the identity of her dead brother 'Lin Feixing', joined the army, and dedicated her life to revenge. Because of her intelligence and her single-minded dedication, she quickly rises to prominence despite her humble origins!
Meanwhile, Li Xian, teen Imperial Princess, has dedicated her life to out-scheming her various half-siblings so that she can deliver the Imperial succession to her beloved but still moderately useless baby brother. When she encounters Lin Wanyue on a field trip to the front, it's love more or less at first sight ...
...well, it's love or at least crush for Lin Wanyue, who encounters the impeccable image of a perfect princess and is immediately ready to become the lionheart to her queen, no questions asked. Li Xian, meanwhile, sees a talented and besotted young officer with no inconvenient connections and the baby beginnings of a brilliant tactical instinct to nurture and is delighted to have discovered such a useful pawn: with a few significant nudges, she's pretty sure she can eventually place 'Lin Feixing' in a position to command the entire border, and that's that army's loyalty sorted.
(As long as Lin Feixing never finds out enough about the various morally questionable things that Li Xian has done for that loyalty to shake, obviously, but it's not like that's going to happen! What is this, amateur hour?)
I dug the course of the romance in the book: intense potentially-misplaced loyalty stuff is very much my jam and I really enjoyed the very slow and difficult shift in Li Xian and Lin Wanyue's relationship from manipulation/hero-worship to genuine partnership, as Lin Wanyue levels up in savvy and Li Xian levels down in ability to crush all her human feelings. Also, I am a simple individual who likes to see a cross-dressing general and a scheming lesbian respectively be more competent than everyone around them, and Female General, Eldest Princess gets top marks on this score.
I liked less the extremely dehumanizing depiction of the Huns (there's one sympathetic and intelligent antagonist-turned-ally at the very end of the book and before that they are more or less ravenous horde video game villains about whom Lin Wanyue has some extremely genocidal fantasies while embarked her Revenge Quest). Also the ending is ... hmm. It's a happy ending overall, it is just also OUT OF LEFT FIELD WILD AS HECK.
( ending spoilers! )
Would love recommendations for other f/f danmei if anyone has them!
