ehyde

I recently finished reading the novel “Evil As Humans” by Nian Zhong and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve been posting some comments on fedi and tumblr as I read, and I want to build off those to make a longer rec post here.

The premise is that Yin Ren, some sort of eldritch being (the novel never actually uses the word “eldritch” but it’s definitely appropriate) has been freed from his thousand-years seal. He would very much like to just blend into the human world, go unnoticed, and have a chance to relax. But instead, he gets roped into the local paranormal agency, along with Zhong Chengshuo, one of the first people he met after re-entering the human world (and they were roommates). But hey, he’s good at this stuff and the agency has a great cafeteria, so as long as he can keep up his human guise, maybe it won’t be so bad.

The novel follows a case of the week format, with everything building up towards an overarching plot. And while it’s labeled horror, and definitely is horror in terms of the amount of gore and body horror going on, jjwxc will of course tell you straight off the bat that there’s a happy ending for the main couple, and I will tell you that the overall conclusion is satisfying for nearly everyone involved. So it doesn’t really feel quite like horror in that sense (actually, it reminded me a lot of the things I loved about BtVS—an adventure with a lot of horror flavor). It’s also really funny! The humor is more concentrated towards the front half, and mostly goes away as it gets more plotty, but it still shows up here and there.

What exactly does it mean for Yin Ren to be an "evil spirit?" Well, there’s a point where his partner watches him eat an apple with a mouth he grew at the end of his prehensile hair and thinks, at least he isn't eating on the couch. Sometimes he grows extra eyes, when it’s convenient. Sometimes his hair extends into uncountable wings. But then there’s the part where Zhong Chengshuo has to coax him back from his true form, which should kill any human to look upon, but which somehow doesn’t hurt him, because, because—

The main character is an evil spirit, what about his partner? Well. Zhong Chengshuo seems to be a normal human, but he’s definitely hiding secrets of his own... I really enjoyed the romantic development. It naturally grows out of their working partnership and friendship—they call themselves “accomplices” first, and they go on being accomplices even after they’re together romantically. There’s a trope I hate—where a character doesn’t recognize their feelings as attraction, and thinks that they’re sick or cursed or whatever. The novel does this...and then explains and resolves it in a way that makes perfect sense for the character, and ultimately it reads as a relatable demisexual moment (no one is actually called demi, but I could make a case for both leads—as much as human sexuality labels apply at all, etc). There’s also a scene with a love potion that is (correctly imo) played as horror. I get the impression that the author might have the same opinion of some common romance tropes as I do. Despite all this, they get together before the halfway point of the book and from then on make a truly excellent power couple. And while all the sex is fade-to-black, it’s definitely safe to assume that some monsterfucking is happening.

I was little bit worried that there might be too much power creep, but while the characters do get (significantly) stronger, the development is balanced and the threats they’re up against continue to grow as well. Yes, it grows from case of the week to saving the world, but it felt like a natural progression of the story. In fact, this novel gives me the impression of being thoroughly planned and outlined, moreso than some other serial-form novels I’ve read. The author has done some sneaky stuff with unreliable narration (from both leads) and when the reveals played out I was like “oh oh OH!” There can be a fine line between “now I see the first half of the book in a new light” and “I’ve been lied to” and I do not feel like I’ve been lied to (no moreso than Gen lied to me in The Thief).

There’s a large cast of side characters (with varying degrees of supernatural powers), and even the (relatively) normal humans continue to play important roles throughout the novel. I want to give a shoutout to one of my favorites, Ge Tingting, who first appears as one of the subjects of an early case and later joins the team. An incident in her childhood gave her the power to control the dead, but cost her the ability to communicate verbally and to comprehend speech, and she spent a lot of time living on her own on the streets. Although her disability was supernaturally acquired, she isn’t immediately given a supernatural cure—instead she uses assistive tech throughout most of the book, which I enjoyed seeing.

The book wasn't perfect—I do think a few of the cases were drawn out too long, and ended up feeling like filler. The book is long. In terms of more well-known cnovels, it sits between MDZS and TGCF in length, so it's far from the longest one out there but it will keep you busy for a while, and I don't think it needed to be quite that long. My other main complaint is that it has some of that lovecraftian take on mental illness—”gaze upon the abyss and lose ten points of sanity”—and that felt slightly uncomfortable at times.

Evil As Humans doesn't seem to have much of an english language fandom. I found it via one person's rec on FFA, and haven't seen it discussed elsewhere, and there are no english fics on ao3. I would love to see this change! I think there's a lot here for fandom to get fannish about and I think it would specifically appeal to a good number of you here.

I will note that the translation is edited MTL, but it's for the most part edited well, and the translator-editor has clearly researched idioms and references that appear in the text, too. Overall I found it fine to read, but I know some of you are pickier about translation than I am. There is the occasional moment where DeepL (or whatever), not knowing it's translating cosmic horror, picks what should be the most likely interpretation and... nope. For example, there's a scene where Yin Ren is very large. He's holding Zhong Chengshuo in the palm of his hand. I didn't realize this for a couple of pages though, because the translation said they were holding hands 😂

Beyond this ... I already warned for gore. I want to be clear that the body horror is not just "yay, tentacles," but there's some seriously messed up I-have-no-mouth-and-I-must-scream stuff happening. There's an arc that makes me never want to read The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body again. There is not really much to warn for outside of the gore, though (and I’d be happy to answer about any specific triggers if there’s something you want to ask about).

I hope you consider giving it a try!