Books Read: How To Survive As A Villain

How To Survive As A Villain - this was a fun read! I posted a little bit about it in a miscellaneous post a few weeks back, but to recap: it's a transmigration story that starts out with a similar premise to SVSSS--the protagonist (Xiao Yu'an) transmigrates into the villain of a novel, and has to make nice with the original protagonist (Yan Heqing) in order to survive. It takes this in a different direction, though: less than a quarter into the novel,Xiao Yu'an straight up tells Yan Heqing that he's a transmigrator. This proves not to be a straightforward get-out-of-plot free card, although it does mean that they're on the same team from early on (although various misconceptions and miscommunications keep them from becoming a couple right away).

The novel takes a sharp turn from comedy to tragedy (I'd tag it angst with a happy ending) and ultimately, I felt like there was a tone mismatch between the writing style and the subject matter--the writing worked really well for the comedic parts of the novel, but when darker and heavier stuff started happening it felt...idk, almost superficial? This may have been partially the fault of the translation (I'm saying this because my friend who read it in chinese seems to have gotten more out of the novel than I did, but then again, maybe we just had different opinions about it!).

I'd rec it if you're looking for something overall fun and not too deep. I enjoyed it, but I'm not going to be dwelling on it much now that I'm done.