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folkofthebook's review against another edition
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Murder, Grief, Violence, Death, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Alcohol
Minor: War
opalmars's review
medium-paced
2.0
A whole romance book where the romance isn’t even developed… that was definitely a choice. 🫤
This review is VERY LONG, so the summary is:
➤ The romance wasn’t developed at all (they fell in love in the first 25% of the book, off-page).
➤ The MC is a terrible spy and only survived because of plot armor.
➤ The story was full of nonsense (there’s only so much disbelief I have to suspend).
➤ The SCs were irrelevant.
➤ Most of the possibly-interesting action happened off-page.
The in-depth review:
The book starts with the MC Xishi (who is very VERY hot) being saved by a man (who is also very VERY hot). You instantly know than man is going to be the LI simply based on the fact that he’s the only person who got a really long and poetic physical description (he has beautiful clear skin, shiny hair and eyes, sharp angles in his face, his features are “beautifully refined”, he’s so tall her head only reaches his shoulders uwuuuuu, he’s literally described as “ethereal” at some point, he’s so strong he can lift her as if she “weighed no more than a feather”, etc.). I have 3 things to say about this:
1) I need authors to STOP making it so obvious from page 1 who the LI is simply based on how long his physical description is. It’s tacky and annoying.
2) Xishi and Fanli (the LI) were described as hot coooooonstantly throughout the book. I understand that HER beauty was central to the plot, so I kinda get that, but HIS??? I get it!!! His features are sharp!!! He is sexy and hot and you’re very very into him!! ENOUGH!!! 🤚🏻🤚🏻🤚🏻
3) Basically every Ann Liang LI looks the same: smooth skin, beautiful nose and lips, shiny dark hair and eyes, sharp jaw, very tall and skinny but still kinda strong… you literally can’t tell them apart. The only thing that made Fanli physically different was the fact that he had long hair. I’m begging Ann Liang to learn how to describe men differently, because this is getting absurd. Write a short king next, girl! A dude with tanner skin! Somebody with curlier hair! A wide nose! Some acne, for fuck’s sake! I believe in you! you don’t need to copy-paste these men!
Fanli then reaches out to Xishi and tells her: “Yeah so basically we want you to pretend to be a concubine for the enemy king while in actuality you’ll be spying on him and distracting him from his work bc we want to conquer his kingdom”. It was very dumb that Fanli (who’s supposed to be SUPER intelligent) was just telling this whole plan to a stranger (like, you’re compromising your mission. What if she tells that plan to other people?), but okay. She immediately accepts that mission and is whisked away to a remote place to train as a spy for 10 weeks, alongside Zhengdan, a friend of hers from her village who will pretend to be her maid. I wish her reasons for accepting putting herself at risk were better explained. The author should’ve emphasized her poverty and her desire for revenge for her sister’s murder.
In the first 1/3 of the book Xishi is training to become a spy, while simultaneously getting closer to Fanli. Almost all of this happens off-page. We did get a couple of moments that showed her training and her talking to Fanli, but they were mostly inconsequential. The dumbest scene for me was the one where Fanli does that thing men do in romcoms where he stands behind the woman with his arms around her to teach her something (in this case, how to play an instrument)…… I just had to check that this is in fact a historical book released in 2024, and not a silly modern romcom from 2005. 🤐 Xishi then insisted on playing that instrument until her hands were “slick with [her] own blood” for literally NO reason other than the fact that she wanted to learn to play in a day instead of leaving it for tomorrow, and she wanted to prove she could play better than girls who’d been learning from childhood… This is just one of the MULTIPLE times where it becomes evident that this bitch is STUPID 🤨
This whole section of the book had a lot of *telling instead of showing*, which is disappointing, firstly, because I’d really like to see a commoner being trained as a spy. That sounds SO COOL!!! Why not show it? It was such a missed opportunity! ☹️ But, most importantly, the decision to barely show anything that happened in those 10 weeks made the romance extremely poor.
I’m truly shocked that Ann Liang (an author who’s written 3 pretty well-developed romances) decided to NOT develop the romance in her 4th romance book…???????????? Literally WHY??? Why didn’t she show ANY of it???!! I’m not joking when I say I cannot list A SINGLE REASON for Fanli and Xishi to like each other, other than the fact that they’re hot. That’s it. There was no development, no bonding, nothing. They talk to each other sometimes, but they’re instantly feeling an immense attraction, and by the 30% mark they’re already in love, when, to me, they were barely even ACQUAINTANCES. I was seriously going insane. Like, what do you MEANNNN you’re feeling all of this for a man you BARELY EVEN KNOW?????? 🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨
The poorly developed romance is extremely egregious because she then spends the last 70% of the book barely even interacting with Fanli, because she’s working as a spy-concubine in the enemy’s castle (this period spans for over a year, btw!). And SOMEHOW, even after all that time, Xishi is STILL pining over that cardboard cutout of a man. 😭🤚🏻 It would already be hard to believe she fell soooo deeply in love in only 10 weeks and that love didn’t falter at all after over a YEAR. It’s IMPOSSIBLE to believe it when you didn’t even bother showing them ACTUALLY getting close and falling for each other. Absurd. The “romance” in this book was absolute shit.
There were A LOT of dumb things in this first section of the book (like the fact that Xishi’s final test was simply to seduce 1 random man at a tea-shop, and boom, she was officially a spy. 🙄 Or the time she got shot in the shoulder with an arrow and ended up in a coma for A WEEK??? Bffr… 🥴. Or the fact that despite having trained for 10 weeks to seduce the enemy king, Xishi never even bothered to ask his age… no braincells found in that pretty head of hers lol 💀).
But then Xishi FINALLY gets to the enemy kingdom and into the palace, and I was actually excited! I thought we’d get scenes of her lurking around, spying on people, going through rooms, climbing walls to get to important, locked rooms through windows……. But we barely got anything. 🤡🤡🤡
Most of her “spying” is done off-page (just like her training), and is told instead of shown. All we ever see Xishi do is manipulate the king by making little requests here and there, and, because Ann Liang refuses to let Xishi struggle for anything, the king is never suspicious of her, and immediately does everything she asks of him. This man (who is also very VERY hot, obviously) literally “fell in love” with Xishi the moment he saw her, and like… I get that he’s frivolous and she’s oh-so-hot, but still – you CANNOT convince me that a king wouldn’t be suspicious of her. The only reason Xishi wasn’t questioned whenever she denied the king’s demands or requested things of him was because of some very strong plot-armor. You reeeeally need to suspend your disbelief with this book, because nothing in that palace made any sense. 😵💫
Her time at the palace was also riddled with extremely dumb things (other than the fact that the king somehow didn’t find her suspicious), like:
➤ how Xishi managed to bring a whole ass sword into the palace (did they not check her belongings before letting her go CLOSE TO THE KING, especially knowing damn well she’s from the enemy kingdom?? 😑).
➤ how she was ignored for days after arriving and yet when she yelled for a doctor THE KING HIMSELF immediately showed up? And then started applying medicine on her bloody wound (mind you, this is a person he spoke to ONCE). So unserious… 🥴
➤ how she literally just asked a guard to let her leave the palace and he immediately did?? And then she met up with a messenger from her kingdom so she could trade information she got by spying. Lollll okay it’s THAT EASY 😐.
➤ the fact that the KING let one of his concubines convince him to get drunk before an important meeting, and then let her join the meeting, where important information was being divulged…. Once again, in WHAT WORLD? + everything is SO EASY for her. 🙄
➤ the amount of times Xishi mentioned seeing someone’s BLACK EYES darken, or their colour deepening, was also quite mind numbing. That’s not something you can see, especially not that often. Ann Liang PLEASE try to find a different way to convey emotions. Please and thank you. 🥱
Everything was handed to Xishi. She never had to struggle for anything in this book, which made this story have no stakes. That, in addition to the fact that we rarely ever *see* her do anything, made this book extremely dull.
The moment she gets found out (kinda) is when she’s kissing the king and she says Fanli’s name (that’s the cardboard cutout of a man that she was barely acquainted with, yet was supposedly deeply in love with even though she’d known him for 10 weeks, and hadn’t seen him in like a year, btw!). I giggled because like…. Bitch?? I knew you were dumb, but SERIOUSLY?? 🤣🤣🤣 The king then brings Fanli over to his palace to torture him in front of Xishi to see her reaction. Somebody straight up just pierces Fanli’s chest with a sword, twisting it around and everything. Fanli, who’s apparently invincible, barely even flinches. Afterwards Xishi and Fanli meet up, because of cooooourse the king just let them go instead of… idk… keeping guards around them??? 🙄 One of them if your enemy, the other is the woman you’re suspicious of… But okay. Ann Liang can’t let these characters struggle + she needed an excuse to get these 2 *acquaintances* together again, to show their “romance” or whatever. Yawnnnn. 🥱
And guess what?! THE KING IMMEDIATELY TRUSTS HER AGAIN AFTER THIS! 🤡🤡🤡 Some months later the king invites Fanli for a banquet and then tells Xishi to show Fanli around the palace (once again, with no guards…. 😑). This was just another forced way for Ann Liang to put those 2 in a room together. It makes NO sense that they wouldn’t be followed, or that they would even RISK showing their emotions for each other in a palace full of servants, guards, maids, etc. Ridiculous. In this scene Fanli does that horrible crusty men do in romances where he grabs her wrist and pins her to the wall, trapping her 🤢🤢🤢. It’s supposed to be hot, but to me it’s gross 🤮. Ann Liang also did this in her book that just came out last month, in case you needed more evidence that her LIs are starting to be noticeably copy-pasted.
At this point you might’ve noticed that I haven’t mentioned anyone other than the MC, the LI and the king she spends most of the book with, and that is for a very simple reason: the SCs are completely irrelevant to this story. Remember Zhengdan (Xishi’s bff and maid I mentioned at the start)? Yeah, neither did the author, because she’s barely in the story. She could’ve been a cool character, but since we rarely saw her and her friendship with Xishi was told instead of shown, it is impossible to care about her. I didn’t feel a thing in Zhengdan’s last scene in the book lol. 🫤 Fanli’s friend (whose name I don’t even remember) was literally only there to praise Fanli. Xishi’s family was mentioned a handful of times, but they didn’t matter at all. Every SC in this book was underdeveloped, irrelevant and completely forgettable.
I also need to say that THIS IS NOT A FANTASY BOOK!!! I genuinely don’t know why it’s being marketed as such. The only fantasy elements are some vague mentions of ghosts/afterlife in the last 10 pages of the book. This isn’t fantasy *at all*; it’s just a (very underwhelming) historical romance.
Overall, while this wasn’t the worst book I’ve ever read, it is definitely a huge disappointment, given that I like Ann Liang’s other books. This is also definitely a REEEEALLY dumb book. 🥴 If you can turn off your brain perhaps you’ll be able to look past all the dumb/nonsensical plot points, but the romance isn’t even good enough to indulge in, so I personally wouldn’t recommend. 🤷🏻 Given the fact that I literally couldn’t go more than 3 pages without finding something really stupid that I NEEDED to complain about (just go through my reading updates lol), I cannot give this more than 2 stars.
ARCs available for everyone to download on Netgalley.
This review is VERY LONG, so the summary is:
➤ The romance wasn’t developed at all (they fell in love in the first 25% of the book, off-page).
➤ The MC is a terrible spy and only survived because of plot armor.
➤ The story was full of nonsense (there’s only so much disbelief I have to suspend).
➤ The SCs were irrelevant.
➤ Most of the possibly-interesting action happened off-page.
The in-depth review:
The book starts with the MC Xishi (who is very VERY hot) being saved by a man (who is also very VERY hot). You instantly know than man is going to be the LI simply based on the fact that he’s the only person who got a really long and poetic physical description (he has beautiful clear skin, shiny hair and eyes, sharp angles in his face, his features are “beautifully refined”, he’s so tall her head only reaches his shoulders uwuuuuu, he’s literally described as “ethereal” at some point, he’s so strong he can lift her as if she “weighed no more than a feather”, etc.). I have 3 things to say about this:
1) I need authors to STOP making it so obvious from page 1 who the LI is simply based on how long his physical description is. It’s tacky and annoying.
2) Xishi and Fanli (the LI) were described as hot coooooonstantly throughout the book. I understand that HER beauty was central to the plot, so I kinda get that, but HIS??? I get it!!! His features are sharp!!! He is sexy and hot and you’re very very into him!! ENOUGH!!! 🤚🏻🤚🏻🤚🏻
3) Basically every Ann Liang LI looks the same: smooth skin, beautiful nose and lips, shiny dark hair and eyes, sharp jaw, very tall and skinny but still kinda strong… you literally can’t tell them apart. The only thing that made Fanli physically different was the fact that he had long hair. I’m begging Ann Liang to learn how to describe men differently, because this is getting absurd. Write a short king next, girl! A dude with tanner skin! Somebody with curlier hair! A wide nose! Some acne, for fuck’s sake! I believe in you! you don’t need to copy-paste these men!
Fanli then reaches out to Xishi and tells her: “Yeah so basically we want you to pretend to be a concubine for the enemy king while in actuality you’ll be spying on him and distracting him from his work bc we want to conquer his kingdom”. It was very dumb that Fanli (who’s supposed to be SUPER intelligent) was just telling this whole plan to a stranger (like, you’re compromising your mission. What if she tells that plan to other people?), but okay. She immediately accepts that mission and is whisked away to a remote place to train as a spy for 10 weeks, alongside Zhengdan, a friend of hers from her village who will pretend to be her maid. I wish her reasons for accepting putting herself at risk were better explained. The author should’ve emphasized her poverty and her desire for revenge for her sister’s murder.
In the first 1/3 of the book Xishi is training to become a spy, while simultaneously getting closer to Fanli. Almost all of this happens off-page. We did get a couple of moments that showed her training and her talking to Fanli, but they were mostly inconsequential. The dumbest scene for me was the one where Fanli does that thing men do in romcoms where he stands behind the woman with his arms around her to teach her something (in this case, how to play an instrument)…… I just had to check that this is in fact a historical book released in 2024, and not a silly modern romcom from 2005. 🤐 Xishi then insisted on playing that instrument until her hands were “slick with [her] own blood” for literally NO reason other than the fact that she wanted to learn to play in a day instead of leaving it for tomorrow, and she wanted to prove she could play better than girls who’d been learning from childhood… This is just one of the MULTIPLE times where it becomes evident that this bitch is STUPID 🤨
This whole section of the book had a lot of *telling instead of showing*, which is disappointing, firstly, because I’d really like to see a commoner being trained as a spy. That sounds SO COOL!!! Why not show it? It was such a missed opportunity! ☹️ But, most importantly, the decision to barely show anything that happened in those 10 weeks made the romance extremely poor.
I’m truly shocked that Ann Liang (an author who’s written 3 pretty well-developed romances) decided to NOT develop the romance in her 4th romance book…???????????? Literally WHY??? Why didn’t she show ANY of it???!! I’m not joking when I say I cannot list A SINGLE REASON for Fanli and Xishi to like each other, other than the fact that they’re hot. That’s it. There was no development, no bonding, nothing. They talk to each other sometimes, but they’re instantly feeling an immense attraction, and by the 30% mark they’re already in love, when, to me, they were barely even ACQUAINTANCES. I was seriously going insane. Like, what do you MEANNNN you’re feeling all of this for a man you BARELY EVEN KNOW?????? 🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨
The poorly developed romance is extremely egregious because she then spends the last 70% of the book barely even interacting with Fanli, because she’s working as a spy-concubine in the enemy’s castle (this period spans for over a year, btw!). And SOMEHOW, even after all that time, Xishi is STILL pining over that cardboard cutout of a man. 😭🤚🏻 It would already be hard to believe she fell soooo deeply in love in only 10 weeks and that love didn’t falter at all after over a YEAR. It’s IMPOSSIBLE to believe it when you didn’t even bother showing them ACTUALLY getting close and falling for each other. Absurd. The “romance” in this book was absolute shit.
There were A LOT of dumb things in this first section of the book (like the fact that Xishi’s final test was simply to seduce 1 random man at a tea-shop, and boom, she was officially a spy. 🙄 Or the time she got shot in the shoulder with an arrow and ended up in a coma for A WEEK??? Bffr… 🥴. Or the fact that despite having trained for 10 weeks to seduce the enemy king, Xishi never even bothered to ask his age… no braincells found in that pretty head of hers lol 💀).
But then Xishi FINALLY gets to the enemy kingdom and into the palace, and I was actually excited! I thought we’d get scenes of her lurking around, spying on people, going through rooms, climbing walls to get to important, locked rooms through windows……. But we barely got anything. 🤡🤡🤡
Most of her “spying” is done off-page (just like her training), and is told instead of shown. All we ever see Xishi do is manipulate the king by making little requests here and there, and, because Ann Liang refuses to let Xishi struggle for anything, the king is never suspicious of her, and immediately does everything she asks of him. This man (who is also very VERY hot, obviously) literally “fell in love” with Xishi the moment he saw her, and like… I get that he’s frivolous and she’s oh-so-hot, but still – you CANNOT convince me that a king wouldn’t be suspicious of her. The only reason Xishi wasn’t questioned whenever she denied the king’s demands or requested things of him was because of some very strong plot-armor. You reeeeally need to suspend your disbelief with this book, because nothing in that palace made any sense. 😵💫
Her time at the palace was also riddled with extremely dumb things (other than the fact that the king somehow didn’t find her suspicious), like:
➤ how Xishi managed to bring a whole ass sword into the palace (did they not check her belongings before letting her go CLOSE TO THE KING, especially knowing damn well she’s from the enemy kingdom?? 😑).
➤ how she was ignored for days after arriving and yet when she yelled for a doctor THE KING HIMSELF immediately showed up? And then started applying medicine on her bloody wound (mind you, this is a person he spoke to ONCE). So unserious… 🥴
➤ how she literally just asked a guard to let her leave the palace and he immediately did?? And then she met up with a messenger from her kingdom so she could trade information she got by spying. Lollll okay it’s THAT EASY 😐.
➤ the fact that the KING let one of his concubines convince him to get drunk before an important meeting, and then let her join the meeting, where important information was being divulged…. Once again, in WHAT WORLD? + everything is SO EASY for her. 🙄
➤ the amount of times Xishi mentioned seeing someone’s BLACK EYES darken, or their colour deepening, was also quite mind numbing. That’s not something you can see, especially not that often. Ann Liang PLEASE try to find a different way to convey emotions. Please and thank you. 🥱
Everything was handed to Xishi. She never had to struggle for anything in this book, which made this story have no stakes. That, in addition to the fact that we rarely ever *see* her do anything, made this book extremely dull.
The moment she gets found out (kinda) is when she’s kissing the king and she says Fanli’s name (that’s the cardboard cutout of a man that she was barely acquainted with, yet was supposedly deeply in love with even though she’d known him for 10 weeks, and hadn’t seen him in like a year, btw!). I giggled because like…. Bitch?? I knew you were dumb, but SERIOUSLY?? 🤣🤣🤣 The king then brings Fanli over to his palace to torture him in front of Xishi to see her reaction. Somebody straight up just pierces Fanli’s chest with a sword, twisting it around and everything. Fanli, who’s apparently invincible, barely even flinches. Afterwards Xishi and Fanli meet up, because of cooooourse the king just let them go instead of… idk… keeping guards around them??? 🙄 One of them if your enemy, the other is the woman you’re suspicious of… But okay. Ann Liang can’t let these characters struggle + she needed an excuse to get these 2 *acquaintances* together again, to show their “romance” or whatever. Yawnnnn. 🥱
And guess what?! THE KING IMMEDIATELY TRUSTS HER AGAIN AFTER THIS! 🤡🤡🤡 Some months later the king invites Fanli for a banquet and then tells Xishi to show Fanli around the palace (once again, with no guards…. 😑). This was just another forced way for Ann Liang to put those 2 in a room together. It makes NO sense that they wouldn’t be followed, or that they would even RISK showing their emotions for each other in a palace full of servants, guards, maids, etc. Ridiculous. In this scene Fanli does that horrible crusty men do in romances where he grabs her wrist and pins her to the wall, trapping her 🤢🤢🤢. It’s supposed to be hot, but to me it’s gross 🤮. Ann Liang also did this in her book that just came out last month, in case you needed more evidence that her LIs are starting to be noticeably copy-pasted.
At this point you might’ve noticed that I haven’t mentioned anyone other than the MC, the LI and the king she spends most of the book with, and that is for a very simple reason: the SCs are completely irrelevant to this story. Remember Zhengdan (Xishi’s bff and maid I mentioned at the start)? Yeah, neither did the author, because she’s barely in the story. She could’ve been a cool character, but since we rarely saw her and her friendship with Xishi was told instead of shown, it is impossible to care about her. I didn’t feel a thing in Zhengdan’s last scene in the book lol. 🫤 Fanli’s friend (whose name I don’t even remember) was literally only there to praise Fanli. Xishi’s family was mentioned a handful of times, but they didn’t matter at all. Every SC in this book was underdeveloped, irrelevant and completely forgettable.
I also need to say that THIS IS NOT A FANTASY BOOK!!! I genuinely don’t know why it’s being marketed as such. The only fantasy elements are some vague mentions of ghosts/afterlife in the last 10 pages of the book. This isn’t fantasy *at all*; it’s just a (very underwhelming) historical romance.
Overall, while this wasn’t the worst book I’ve ever read, it is definitely a huge disappointment, given that I like Ann Liang’s other books. This is also definitely a REEEEALLY dumb book. 🥴 If you can turn off your brain perhaps you’ll be able to look past all the dumb/nonsensical plot points, but the romance isn’t even good enough to indulge in, so I personally wouldn’t recommend. 🤷🏻 Given the fact that I literally couldn’t go more than 3 pages without finding something really stupid that I NEEDED to complain about (just go through my reading updates lol), I cannot give this more than 2 stars.
ARCs available for everyone to download on Netgalley.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail and Murder
Minor: Violence, Torture, Toxic friendship, Misogyny, and War
love_and_lilacs's review
challenging
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
I loved this book. Being completely unfamiliar with both the author and the subject matter, I wasn't really sure what I was getting into, but by the end I was compelled to begin researching the myths and stories that formed the foundation of this novel.
There were certainly a few points that I felt the pacing could have been improved but it wasn't enough to stop me from enjoying the story. And there were a few minor points where I wasn't entirely clear on how much time was passing, particularly once Xishi arrives at the Wu castle.
The ending was also entirely unexpected, and then unexpected one more time before it all wrapped up. Maybe if you're familiar with Xishi's story and the variations of her myth, you won't be surprised at all, but I certainly was.
I hesitate to make this comparison, because I feel like it puts too much pressure on this book, but I would say that people who enjoy Madeline Miller's works will also enjoy this one. Miller's prose is likely the stronger, but I was hardly disappointed by Liang's writing style either.
The romance was also constructed in a way that felt compelling and satisfying to read, and I found myself anxious to learn the ultimate fate of Xishi and Fanli.
I devoured this in almost a single sitting and only stopped reading because it was 3 am. I can imagine myself returning to this book to read it again, perhaps at a slower pace that allows me to savor what I might have missed the first time around.
Perhaps the highest praise I can give this book is that it moved me to tears, and any book that can move me to feel real emotion is worth my time.
ARC provided by NetGalley
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Gore, Physical abuse, War, Blood, Torture, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, and Violence
Moderate: Alcoholism and Alcohol
Minor: Animal cruelty
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