Reviews - The Emperor and the Endless Palace

1.54k reviews for:

The Emperor and the Endless Palace

Justinian Huang

3.53 AVERAGE

leannj's review

4.5

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This book was a wild ride. For the first third I was so confused as to where the plot was headed, and then as the pieces fell into place I could not put it down. The ending was was heartbreaking, but it felt earned. I liked that the actions and morality of the characters were very ambiguous in a way that worked for the story without feeling like just for the sake of it- I almost wish there had been more moral ambiguity.

jsberick's review

3.5

mysterious sad fast-paced

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

An intriguing multi-life romance and mystery for the reader to place who is who in each lifetime. I enjoyed the authors writing and will keep an eye out for their next book.

I don’t think I would label this as a love story as it feels a bit obsessive and toxic. I also find it interesting (or I could just be confused) that the emperor was a fox spirit but then gave that power to Joey, so how was it that the emperor was reborn? And it seems a bit irresponsible that people are reborn with the same face over and over again, hahaha.

gabby_hammer's review against another edition

2.0

adventurous lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

A love story that spans lifetimes, the Emperor and the Endless Palace follows two men’s relationship in three different eras.

On the pros side of this book, the characters are unapologetically queer. There are certainly some struggles with identity in the book, but overall the characters are loud and proud. I also learned some interesting Chinese folklore from this story, like the myth of the nine-tailed Fox spirits.

There were a few big cons for me in this book. Despite its framing as a love story, every relationship in this book felt forced and/or toxic. The “true feeling” between the love interest seemed to represent something closer to obsession than love. I can’t say that there was ever a moment when I was genuinely rooting for the characters to get together. I also was not a particular fan of the writing. There were a lot of cringeworthy moments, especially in the modern day scenes. This was not helped by the sex scenes. There has to be a better way to describe what’s happening without calling parts “swollen influence” and “pink plum”.

All of this for the characters to a) die b) cheat or c) not even end up together. This story had a lot of potential, but it just didn’t work for me. 2/5

Content Warnings

melvinculpa's review against another edition

4.25

my bad romantasy genre i was not aware of your game

kimdonahue93's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous challenging mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

book_cockroach's review

2.0

I genuinely don't know what to say about this. I like the idea but I don't like the execution I guess.

Also freaky grandma's. Yep there's a freaky lady. I'm not one to kink shame but here we are, ms non consensual (she drugs ppl!!!) voyeur. Anytime she was in a part, I cringed ༎ຶ⁠‿⁠༎ຶ
Also the flowery language in the sex scenes and just the sex scenes in general were not that sexy to me tbh..in fact I actually laughed or questioned my reality when I read some of them.

Also besides from a freaky voyeur grandma, there was also a rapist.

But at least there was Calvin (⁠ ⁠◜⁠‿⁠◝⁠ ⁠)⁠♡
And the cover is so pretty oml