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alias_sqbrThis is a very fun Chinese fantasy m/m romance novel.
The main character is a dragon who's spent thousands of years cheerfully not really caring about anything...but then someone captured him and stole some of his bones, leaving him half paralysed and very angry. In the journey to get revenge and find his bones, he encounters an uptight amnesiac monk who he feels oddly drawn to tease. The two of them go on a mystery solving road trip, inadvertently making friends and saving innocent people along the way despite both considering themselves lone wolves above that sort of thing.
There's some sad and scary elements, including some super creepy bugs, but the tone is mostly light and good natured. There's a lot of disabled characters, the narrative is always sympathetic but sometimes a bit ableist, the only part that seriously bothered me was at the start when an intellectually disabled person is referred to as "the idiot" instead of his name :/ On the plus side, the translator was bothered by this too and warns for it, and translates it as his name instead.
The main character's paralysis is temporary (this isn't a spoiler, he knows from the start) and the writing around it isn't perfect, but he's enjoyably irrepressible while paralysed. He gets a wheelchair for a while and moves it around with magic powers, which was fun.
The sex is vaguely described but cheerfully consensual, except for an awkwardly consensual sex pollen scene with mutual pining.
The translator is going back and redoing everything chapter by chapter: Translator's Introduction, Chapter one. Progress by scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking 'newer post', when you run out of edited chapters put the name of the next chapter in the search bar to get the link of the unedited version.
The edited translation is quite good. I was a bit worried the unedited translation would be harder to read but it's fine, just a little more slapdash, the footnotes are less serious discussions of character meanings and more "UGH she's using the same metaphor AGAIN".
I learned about the book from Flamebyrd's great post about it, which has some details I missed.
The main character is a dragon who's spent thousands of years cheerfully not really caring about anything...but then someone captured him and stole some of his bones, leaving him half paralysed and very angry. In the journey to get revenge and find his bones, he encounters an uptight amnesiac monk who he feels oddly drawn to tease. The two of them go on a mystery solving road trip, inadvertently making friends and saving innocent people along the way despite both considering themselves lone wolves above that sort of thing.
There's some sad and scary elements, including some super creepy bugs, but the tone is mostly light and good natured. There's a lot of disabled characters, the narrative is always sympathetic but sometimes a bit ableist, the only part that seriously bothered me was at the start when an intellectually disabled person is referred to as "the idiot" instead of his name :/ On the plus side, the translator was bothered by this too and warns for it, and translates it as his name instead.
The main character's paralysis is temporary (this isn't a spoiler, he knows from the start) and the writing around it isn't perfect, but he's enjoyably irrepressible while paralysed. He gets a wheelchair for a while and moves it around with magic powers, which was fun.
The sex is vaguely described but cheerfully consensual, except for an awkwardly consensual sex pollen scene with mutual pining.
The translator is going back and redoing everything chapter by chapter: Translator's Introduction, Chapter one. Progress by scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking 'newer post', when you run out of edited chapters put the name of the next chapter in the search bar to get the link of the unedited version.
The edited translation is quite good. I was a bit worried the unedited translation would be harder to read but it's fine, just a little more slapdash, the footnotes are less serious discussions of character meanings and more "UGH she's using the same metaphor AGAIN".
I learned about the book from Flamebyrd's great post about it, which has some details I missed.
