Qi Ye so far

[ehyde]

I'm slowly working my way through Qi Ye by Priest, although I'm not super far along yet. Pretty much all I knew for a long time was "it has some of the same characters as TYK" or possibly even "it's a prequel to TYK" and "people who only watched WOH don't know about Literal Toddler Murderer Zhou Zishu" and well, I bounced off of Word of Honor, and child death is one of my major nopes, so I had this filed away as not interested for a while. But then I learned a bit more about the actual plot of this novel, and saw it recced with a "if you want political intrigue" note (I did; I'd just finished A Memory Called Empire and thoroughly enjoyed it after bouncing off some Hunt For Red October fic that smoothed out the politics too much) and so, after asking for some clarification about the child death thing, I picked it up.

The premise is it's a time travel fix-it, but with a twist: the main character, Jing Beiyuan, experienced not just one life that went badly, but the following five reincarnations as well, reincarnating alongside the same person each time. Instead of jumping at the chance to make things right between them (as you'd expect in a time travel fix it fic) he's...well he's not quite at "man, fuck this guy" but more "I don't have any feelings for you whatsoever." However, he still needs to make sure he ends up on the throne, that's just good sense...and meanwhile there's this new guy who wasn't there in his first life.

Things I like so far: the twist on the genre. The fact that Jing Beiyuan doesn't even try to act like a realistic child. And I just like him a lot in general.
Things I like less: it feels a bit slow paced so far, and I think that's contributing to my own slow pace reading. I'm also kinda sideeyeing Priest's fantasy foreign culture because this is three for three of her books I've read where she's had a culture with a "noble savage" feel to it and while the characters themselves are fine the vibes are. Yeah.

Comments

[momijizukamori]

Yeah unfortunately that is A Problem in a bunch of her writing (and a bunch of cnovel writing in general, unfortunately - MXTX has it going on too). Tai Sui definitely felt like she was *trying* to do better but didn't quite succeed.

What's the TL like? I have not read it yet because Chichi has two modes, 'mostly readable with annoying editorializing TLer notes + fuck-off weird choices for some things' and 'this reads like someone just dictionary-substituted the original Chinese', and I absolutely do not want to deal with the latter one again.

[anehan]

'this reads like someone just dictionary-substituted the original Chinese'

Heh, that's such an accurate description of a certain style of translation. I haven't read any of Chichi's translations, specifically, but I've run across it way too often elsewhere.

[duckprintspress]

I really, really loved Qi Ye, but I didn't know about the Literal Toddler Murderer part going in, and I ended up triggered to heck and back and had to skip a few chapters, sigh. It just had never crossed my mind, from what I know of WoH, that I'd be in danger reading it, so I didn't even check spoilers going in, and I had Regrets.

I'd say it is pretty slow-paced over all, but I still liked it a lot. I enjoyed it more than Tian Ya Ke, for starters. It's no Mo Du or anything, but. I hope you like it!!

[kolleh]

Qi Ye! We read this in the Jianghu Teahouse book club, which you may already know. It is a slow-paced novel, but I enjoyed chewing on the quiet politics a lot more than I enjoyed Tian Ya Ke's messy wuxia plot with a rotating cast of villains I could barely remember. The main couple is compelling, and I got more than a little attached to many of the side characters (especially Helian Yi, who really goes through it as the no-longer-soulmate). The overall premise that JBY has travelled back to not be with the person he tried so hard for across multiple lives is also pretty unique.

I do agree, on the other hand, that the portrayal of non-Han cultures is frankly awful. I do love Wu Xi himself as a character, but the noble savagery and stereotyping is omnipresent. The Vakurah, who become somewhat more plot relevant later, straight up have a "barbarian horde" framing, complete with handwringing about their population increasing and descriptions comparing them to beasts and predators. It's hard to get away from this kind of thing in C-media, but it started to really grate here.