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wrote_and_writ
I really, really enjoyed this novel. I'm so glad I stuck with it when I had trouble getting into volume one. The world building is interesting, the political intrigue is intriguing enough to keep me interested but not so heavy that it bogged down the narrative, and the relationship between Chang Geng and Gu Yun was a lot of fun to follow.
Volume five clocks in at 436 pages, and only about half is spent wrapping up the main story. Most of the rest is extra stories that give us glimpses of the characters' lives in the decades after the main story. They are a bit of a mixed bag, as you might expect, but some give a bit of back story, some give glimpses into a happy future. (I'll admit, I skimmed the one about Liao Ran because he's kind of a drip.)
At the end, there is an author afterword, however, that really warms me down to my toes.
THIS STORY İs a fairytale written for kidults.
It often seems that, in life, loneliness is more inevitable than death. To young readers, perhaps death is far off, something to be considered only in the distant future. If one can find meaning in life and death during one's time on this earth, then perhaps the prospect of leaving it might even become, to some, something romantic.
The same cannot be said of loneliness. Loneliness grows in the cracks in our bones and lingers in the spaces between our breaths. The extroverted reach out to their peers in every way they can, hoping to establish a flash of connection and forget their solitude. Meanwhile, the introverted turn to their own souls for comfort in a futile attempt to bury their loneliness beneath a veneer of calm.
During Stars of Chaos: Sha Po Lang's initial serialization on JJWXC, many readers, yet to finish the novel, left their pessimistic predictions under each chapter. Some believed the protagonists' intense feelings for each other would be tainted by power, while others presumed the chaos of war would force them to part forever, in life and death. Everyone knows the world is as changeable as the tide, human emotions are as thin as paper, and regardless of whether one is a saint, sage, deity, or demon, everyone is bound by their own circumstances.
But I did not allow this story to develop that way. Instead, I did my best to turn this novel into a dreamy reverie— a puff of cotton candy that might be sold by Disney. To that end, I constructed an intricate plot with many details to give the semblance of realism. This way, in the handful of hours during which readers immersed themselves in this story, they could forget the trials and tribulations of life and find some small measure of solace.
This is the kind of author I am. I do not wish to touch the truths of the world, nor do I wish to interrogate any one's soul. I only wish to comfort you, my readers.
Good night.
priest
Written on the night of January 14, 2024, in Beijing, China.
I love this, especially since being so overtly comforting is often a mark against a story, and that is just silly. And I also love that all the Seven Seas danmei titles have illustrations throughout. I think all books should have illustrations.
Anyway, if you were waiting for all the English novels to be published, they're out now. I'm looking forward to the publication of Mo Du/Silent Reading, which, from what I've gleaned so far, seems to make a liar out of the priest who wrote Sha Po Lang's afterword, but I really like priest's works, so I'm going to give it a shot.
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Date: 2025-02-03 05:14 pm (UTC)Haha, so true! Mo Du is more like heavy reading than silent reading but it ended up being my favorite priest novel.
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Date: 2025-02-04 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-02-08 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-02-08 04:56 pm (UTC)