Carm's corner

So... this is the third danmei I've read.

My first was Mo Dao Zu Shi. My original plan was to read SVSSS and then maybe TGCF because I was curious and a big part of my timeline on fedi seemed to be reading them. But then I didn't. I got distracted watching the MDZS donghua, reading fics and watching different shows, and then gradually I started following more people that were talking about other danmei.

I don't even remember the exact reason but I ended up choosing to read Lord Seventh (by Neon's recommendation) instead of another MXTX novel. I think it was because I wanted to know different authors and styles, and maybe a bit because I've always been a bit allergic to trends and many people talking about something makes me want to avoid the thing (I never watched GoT, for example, and I read a certain series of book about a wizard boy written by a transphobic brit woman only until I was in college and not in middle school or highschool like most of my peers, but I digress).

So, yeah. I loved Qi Ye. I loved the political intrigue and the fighting against fate and Jing Beiyuan is my kind of character. It still took me a while and I think one of the factors is that it's longer than the average book I'm used to read (if I don't count series of books or the good old bricks I had to read when I was a uni student like Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina or Don Quijote... I enjoyed and still love some of those bricks but they're still bricks). But in the end I enjoyed it a lot. Back then I wasn't contemplating having a dreamwidth account to write my thoughts so I'm using this post to say something about it.

However, this post was intended to be about Devil Venerable Also Wants To Know, by Cyan Wings.

This one also took me a bit to finish for a number of reasons that go from mental health, workload, motivation and also the fact that in the first third of the book there are many elements I was unfamiliar with so I stopped frequently to take notes to remember later, like the different stages of cultivation it mentions or the names of the sects and characters. But once I was familiar with all these details, I felt comfortable enough and didn't get distracted so often. But besides this, I really enjoyed it.

First of all, I loved that everything starts with a mysterious book that suddenly appears in the hands of Wenren È, the protagonist (a powerful demonic cultivator and leader of the Xuanyuan sect), and then we see his inability to understand why Baili Qingmiao, the protagonist of the mysterious book (Abusive Romance: You Are the Unchanging One in My Heart, a romance novel) acts the way she does. But the thing is that the book talks about Wenren È's world and he is the second of the many love interests of Baili Qingmiao, so, naturally, he feels intrigued. In the novel inside the novel, Wenren È dies because of his love for Baili Qingmiao and Yin Hanjiang, his most loyal subordinate, loses his mind after that. So he goes and tries to understand and starts changing the events of his world, which end up changing the plot of the novel.

I hope I didn't write the previous paragraph in a confusing manner, but I got interrupted and got a bit lost.

Anyway, the concept of the story was fun, but then the characters enamored me. Starting with Wenren È and his curiosity and his determination, but I also loved how hopeless he is to understand Baili Qingmiao and anything related with love, until he finally does. I also loved my scary repressed baby Yin Hanjiang and how his relationship with Wenren È develops while his Venerable keeps helping Baili Qingmiao get over He Wenzhao, the main love interest in Abusive Romance.

Then we have Shu Yanyan (Xuanyuan's sect Right Protector), Qiu Congxue (one of four Altar masters) and Zhongli Qian (a hostage cultivator from a cultivation clan that ends up being kind of a guest Altar master in Xuanyuan sect) so much. Shu Yanyan and Zhiongli Qian are very smart and very competent, and I would say that the only real braincell havers. Qiu Congxue is also an excellent and tremendously hilarious character, I loved how straightforward and unsubtle she is, and the unexpected bond she has with Baili Qingmiao. I confess I ship them a bit. And I also ended up being very fond of Baili Qingmiao and rooting for her. They are such good characters.

It was a very fun read. There were many times when I really laughed out loud at something one of them said, or when Wenren È read the comment section of a certain chapter of the novel. And also how some comments reflected what I was thinking at the moment. I found those bits particularly brilliant. But then, as the story progressed, I also found myself having feelings and I even cried a little at some point (the betrayal!). I had a good time reading it and not gonna lie, I want to re read it, but I'm going to resist the temptation and read a different one, since my goal is to broaden my horizons when it comes to danmei.

I've never been good at writing reviews and I don't even know if this counts as one, but when I finished, I really wanted to say something about it. Now I'm running a poll on fedi to see what I should read next. We'll see how it goes and what I choose in the end.