the fake chinese characters on the cover should've been my first warning that this would not turn out well, but alas, i just really wanted to know how bad, exactly, a world "inspired by ancient china and classical chinese poetry" can be.

the answer is: absolutely terrible. the worldbuilding is probably the weakest part of the entire novel, which says a lot. shen tao refuses to describe any interesting bits of her secondary world, such as the animals made of plants or the ghosts that only appear 70% into the novel. it's also very obvious from the get-go that she has done absolutely no research on ancient china, instead relying on what paltry bits of knowledge she already has, however inaccurate they might be, to guide her. i know she said this novel is about as faithful to ancient china as game of thrones is to the war of the roses, but when you use hanzi and explicitly say that your magic system is inspired by classical chinese poetry, i expect that inspiration to go a little deeper than the incredibly surface-level "aesthetic" we get. and it's not even a good aesthetic too! there are so many little details that just pull me straight out of the supposedly chinese-inspired world. we'd be here all day if i listed them all, so i'm just going to name a few that really irritated me.

first of all, shen tao doesn't care at all about thoughtful naming. the names in this world were chosen based on a whim and a lack of care for what that might actually sound like to someone who actually speaks the language. there's really no clearer example than the two characters we're given for yin wei's given name: 尾 / tail (yes, it sounds just as ridiculous in chinese as it does in english. who names their kid that??) and 伟 / great. the meaning of the second character sounds nice, right? except that it's an incredibly masculine character. i've never heard of a girl named 伟, whereas it's one of the more popular characters for a boy's name.

to be clear, i think it's fine for a girl to have a masculine name. that's not the problem here. the problem is that shen tao has thus far not shown that she cares one whit for the deeper nuances to these names, which means there's nothing interesting being done about the genderfuckery here, and also that it's fucking ironic to push a masculine name onto a girl who's already been sidelined enough by the men in her life. the book is literally titled after her and yet her husband and brother-in-law are far more memorable and well-written than the soggy cardboard cut-out shen tao made of her.

some other gems for names include general cao myn (aka 草民 cao min / commoner), tsao (transliterated as cao in pinyin, which is effectively 操 / fuck), and the INSANE choice to name the emperor and his father muzha and jinzha respectively. yes, exactly like nezha's brothers, who are significant figures in chinese mythology and religion. you don't do that, not in our culture.

also, i am SICK and fucking TIRED of these authors just mixing and matching random east asian names together in their secondary world!! stop it!! yes, this is admittedly a higher standard than one i hold western authors to, but i am so sick of seeing chinese be treated as easily replaceable by japanese or korean and vice versa. the audience you're writing for might not care that you're randomly picking these names out of a box labelled "sounds vaguely east asian," but you know who's going to care? other east asians in the diaspora who've grown up with the world asking us "what's the difference? aren't you guys all the same?" i'm not even going to touch on the extremely complicated geopolitical tensions between these three countries, because i don't think i can keep myself from saying something truly impolite then.

on that note, the way she transliterates chinese/mandarin in this novel is absolutely unhinged. there's no rhyme or reason to it? she uses proper pinyin for a lot of words such as yin wei's name, but then switches to wades-giles for "tsao te shu" (and whoo boy, what a choice that was. someone didn't think about how that sounded in chinese!), and finishes it off with aunt lien and aunt ahma, which is another clusterfuck in its own right. i know you're writing this for non-chinese speakers, but you don't have to make it that obvious, you know.

secondly, shen tao has absolutely zero understanding of court or harem life. how are you gonna write a court intrigue/political novel when you don't even understand how court/harem politics work?? so many things in this novel just don't work the way she thinks it does. for example, it doesn't matter how many times a concubine is called to her lord husband's chambers if he doesn't bestow on her any material gifts of his favour; in fact, that might even be more of an insult, since he's effectively saying that she's not worthy of the treasures a proper concubine should receive. she would've known this had she watched literally any c-drama in which a harem plays a large role. it doesn't even have to be an emperor's harem, since this would've applied to the aristocracy as well. i've watched short-form dramas with better court intrigue than this, and that says a lot.

finally, her world cannot be considered chinese-inspired, not when there's no depth to it. i'm not seeing how the poems are inspired by classical chinese poetry; there are no oblique references to famous poems, nor does she use many of the central themes and motifs within them. only the length of the poems is somewhat similar, and that's hardly a point to be proud of. i just can't believe she wouldn't take advantage of the vast range of texts she has at her disposal, especially when so many of them could've made her magic system that much more interesting. i talked about this in a forum post already, but she could've had yin wei write reversible poems such as 苏蕙 su hui's 璇玑图 star gauge, or in 女书 nüshu / women's script, a script created by and passed down amongst the women of jiangyong in a time when it was forbidden for women to be educated. sound familiar? i was certainly expecting her to make reference to such instances, but apparently shen tao's conceptualisation of misogyny is so absolute that yin wei is the first women ever to learn to read and write. it's completely unbelievable.

anyway, in conclusion: don't say it's "inspired by ancient china" when you don't even know the first thing about ancient china. i'm not reading your novel for a western fantasy hidden under the thinnest veneer of a "chinese" aesthetic possible, i'm reading it for something that could actually pass for being culturally chinese. sadly, this didn't pass the test.

some more notes on the other elements of the novel, since this review is getting rather long:

• the narrative is very disjointed. it feels like there's a disconnect between the present timeline and everything that happens in the "flashbacks," which is a shame because it ruins the character of terren, who's otherwise the most well-written character in the entire novel. there's seemingly no link between the kindness and childlike innocence of his younger self and the ruthless, bloodthirsty, and emotionless tyrant he grows into. shen tao tries to circumvent it by superimposing his childhood self over himself in the present after yin wei learns his story, but it just comes off as jarring because we're not shown the progression between the two selves. @ayzrules said it feels like shen tao wanted to show off a bunch of really cool oc backstories she'd written, which is a perfect description of this novel imo. though, to be fair to shen tao, some of these backstories were actually quite interesting.
• the plot is just... so contrived? yin wei hardly does any politicking bc everything just falls into place for her. actually, the politics in this novel are mostly just an afterthought, though i suppose it does befit a novel that's been masquerading as a political fantasy.
• the writing is not great. there are so many lines where the flow of the story is interrupted either by grammar issues or missing connectors, and just as many lines that were so cheesy i had to stop reading so i could roll my eyes. it was easy enough to read otherwise, but i definitely won't be picking up another novel by shen tao again.

This is a gorgeously written novella prequel about a squire, Kaelen, and his devotion to his crown Prince, Richard, that winds up with a diplomatic incident and my entire heart being devoted to these two. I’ve seen the authors shared snips on Threads and that was how I first knew the characters, but they’re as expertly developed in a longer format as they are in a handful of sentences.

Richard, in particular, is my most favourite out of the story. It’s a careful tightrope to have a colder scheming character done well and also be kind, and this was such a wonderful character to see through Kaelan’s eyes, understandably rose-tinted at times they may have been. I also liked how Richard’s asexuality is portrayed in the story, it felt truer to life with echoes of feeling broken and not quite understood or fitting into the traditional model of relationships. I appreciate that he’s the older out of the two as well, he’s established in how he is, even if the culture around him and his own view of himself leans disheartened. For that, Kaelen is a delightful contrast, devoted and hilarious with his reactions to the situations he winds up in. Their dynamic is settled, but is starting to shift in this story so I’m excited to see how it unfolds.

It’s a gentle introduction to the world, the magic system, and the wider cast of characters, enough information to follow along with but not diving into anything overly heavy. There’s hints of wider backstory in the character’s (notably the king and his commander) banter and it makes the world feel so very real.