#fengcui still in the lead for my all-time favorite cnovel ship though

[spockandawe]

I'm going to have full cohesive pitches for these books as individual experiences sometime soon, i swear, but since I 1) just finished rereading thousand autumns (first time where it wasn't a third mtl), 2) am rereading peerless for the first time in years, and 3) am reading sleuth of the ming dynasty for the first time ever, I've been thinking a LOT about meng xi shi as an author and trying to scrape together my thoughts. Because I think she's really stunningly good! She's one of those authors whose skill just SHINES through, even when a translation is weak, and that's always something so fascinating to me.

But at the same time, i have a harder time raving about her books than most of my other faves. Trying to pitch thousand autumns to friends was something I really struggled with! The other two are easier, by nature of their central dynamics, while yan wushi cranks this one up to nightmare difficulty mode. But I think that it also provides an example of what I might be having to recalibrate for.

Like, I'm an easy binch. If Hua Cheng is leaving a necklace for Xie Lian early on, or Luo Binghe is noticing Shen Qingqiu's leaves right at the beginning of their books, I'm hootin and hollerin, I'm drumming my heels on the floor. And Meng Xi Shi is NOT about that instant gratification lifestyle. We're not having dessert before dinner, and there is some INTRICATE plot shit happening in all these books that is not getting muscled aside for indulgent ship time.

I'm absolutely certain it's a conscious choice, and one i respect the hell out of, especially since all of these books have the characters woven in with actual historical figures, which always manages yo take me by surprise. I assume details like keeping a wholeass imperial prince secret until he's five are fictional embellishment, but... nope! Actual history! The SCOPE of these plots and the politics they all muck around with means that there are limits to how much an author could spend time on ship bait without trivializing the central conflict. As much as i enjoyed golden stage, i never cared about the politics. And not caring about the politics in meng xi shi's work would be jettisoning SO much nutritional content.

And, that's not to say that there's NOTHING indulgent for me in the earlier parts! Yan Wushi starts delightedly letting people assume he's plowing Shen Qiao as soon as they start traveling together, Feng Xiao spends the second mystery of Peerless totally disguised as Cui Buqu's wife and fighting with him as "this wife", and Sui Zhou and Tang Fan start straight-up cohabiting POSTHASTE. And then. Meng xi shi makes you wait for it.

This isn't bad! The delayed gratification is very GOOD! The tension is delectable. The feeling of 'oh come on now you're just dragging this out on purpose' is mitigated by having characters drag things out in character. Shen Qiao's sense of responsibility pulls him towards Yan Wushi, and then away from Yan Wushi (and yan wushi is also Helping sfhfgdf). Feng Xiao doesn't move THAT fast, but Cui Buqu will Literally Die before he'll admit he has tender feelings. And Tang Fan is textually scared to lose what he has platonically with Sui Zhou by stepping into unknown territory. I'm still howling OH COME ON, but it transmutes into something directed at the characters, not the author.

And the plots we're making space for like this are hefty bois. All of them have heavy political themes, where in my usual diet, i would reluctantly accept a little politics on the side in my ancient chinese fantasy meal. And each of these books has baited me further into caring about mundane politics 😂 In Thousand Autumns, it's very much a balance between lavishly described fantasy martial arts extravaganza and big politics enhanced by the martial arts extravaganza. Peerless, we're down one martial artist in the lead characters, so there's more non-fighting politics happening (and both characters are secret police commanders), but at least one of my boys floats around playing magic music on his guqin. Fourteenth Year Of Chenghua? Goddamn, I'm reading this thing and I'm in the THROES over ancient chinese imperial office politics, like oh noooo oh my god HOW COULD THEY DEMOTE HIM AT A TIME LIKE THIS, fffff, who can possibly intercede with the emepror now-- And i have NO idea how i reached this point, this is so funny to me.

I do think it says a lot for all three of these that they won me over so hard despite not being as tailored to my personal tastes as something like mxtx! I do love all them to pieces. But it's something like... Digging in at the earlier, slower stages of these books was a hell of a struggle. One that paid off, but i worry about people bouncing off them! Something I've said about thousand autumns (and will say again) is that it's a book that asks for a lot of trust from readers. Some of that is PURELY down to yan wushi, but the structure and pace doesn't make that easy. I do think that the trust is repaid by the end, at least in terms of my reading experience, but it makes me worry! I do want people to read these!

Actually that brings me to the last big strong point I want to mention before i get back to reading: the character writing. Because GODDAMN, the character writing. It both contributes to the slow start in these books, I think, but also MASSIVELY enriches the emotional payout as they progress.

Yan Wushi is one of the funniest, most obnoxious characters of all time! He's also cruel, demanding, and overbearing, and a strong, vivid personality like that takes real time and effort to develop. The beginning of the book looks like it could slip into misery porn + stockholm syndrome healing cock = i guess this is a healthy relationship now. And it doesn't! But it's hard to tell how it WILL go, and that makes it hard to commit to a tome like this. Feng Xiao is comparably obnoxious and hilarious, but Cui Buqu is closed up tight as a clam, and both of them deal in secrets professionally, it is HARD to start accessing any hints of emotional sincerity in either of them. And Tang Fan and Sui Zhou are both junior government officials, early in their careers in a volatile work environment, and they present in a pretty reserved, professional way at first, and the subtler/goofier character notes take time and intimacy to properly manifest. wang zhi on the other hand--

I recommend these books! I really recommend them! I don't want to be underwhelming people with 'oh, you won't like it at first, but JUST YOU WAIT.' Because I did like them at first. They didnt elevete me to the same flailing emotional THROES as some novels, but the quiet rich flavor of the relationships in these are FABULOUS. And the sheer scope of the plots she pulls off, I mean, holy shit. I'm not underwhelmed by these books at all, I'm more likely to get overwhelmed, there's a reason I've been savoring the latest reading experience. I like them a lot! I like meng xi shi as a lot! In the sliver of cnovels that I've sampled, her books are doing some really cool things i haven't seen anyone else pull off, especially with such aplomb. I didn't start out LOOKING for books like that, but I'm still really, really glad i found them, and I do highly recommend them, just in general. I'll figure out how to pitch them individually soon.

*holds probably over 1.5M words of meng xi shi tomes* I Just Think She's Neat