Author: Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù
# of Pages: 401 (ebook)
Genre: YA, Adventure, Fantasy
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Synopsis: Born the crown prince of a prosperous kingdom, Xie Lian was renowned for his beauty, strength, and purity. His years of dedication and noble deeds allowed him to ascend to godhood. But those who rise, can also fall...and fall he does, cast from the Heavens again and again and banished to the mortal realm. Eight hundred years after his mortal life, Xie Lian has ascended to godhood for the third time. Now only a lowly scrap collector, he is dispatched to wander the earthly realm to take on tasks appointed by the heavens to pay back debts and maintain his divinity. Aided by old friends and foes alike, and graced with the company of a mysterious young man with whom he feels an instant connection, Xie Lian must confront the horrors of his past in order to dispel the curse of his present.
Review: I was pitched that this story was a gay romance, which is why I wanted to give this story a shot since I was craving a good romance. But somehow I ended up reading a fantasy-adventure horror comedy instead?
I wouldn't even call this first volume of this series romance; when they say it's slow burn, they mean across the WHOLE series apparently. But I didn't even have an issue with the romance being slow burn (it actually is moving faster than I expected). The bigger issue is that the plot is ALSO slow.
My dislike for this book could also be chalked up to a bad translation. There's a lot of concepts/terminology that weren't translated in a way that's easy for the reader to understand without having some Chinese cultural/historical knowledge, and the prose was choppily written to the point where I had to reread sections that were phrased weirdly.
I also did not expect this book to actually be a poorly written YA. Any mysteries are revealed in long monologues by one of the characters, and it's just not engaging nor organic to be told rather than shown the whole plot.
I'm curious on if the romance progresses in the latter books. The male love interest is actually a character I really liked (very cool yet soft personality), and he was one of the more redeeming parts of the book. However, I'm still undecided on whether I'll continue reading (definitely need a break after slogging through this one). I wouldn't recommend this book.
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