I just finished and loved Greetings Ninth Uncle when I came across this novel, which has a similar premise, so I decided to give it a shot.
The story follows Shen Miao, the female lead, who was foolish and gave all of her love to the wrong man in her past life. Even though she eventually became Empress, her husband the Emperor didn't love her at all and instead favored another consort. Because of the lack of feelings towards her and the favored consort's scheming, he pushed both of their children to death and made SM commit suicide afterwards. Luckily SM got another chance at life, and she was reborn back into her 14 year old body, right before she did something foolish to force the 9th prince to marry her. This time, she's determined to protect her Shen family (but only her household, the others are all scum) and take revenge on everyone who wrong her in her past life.
The story starts out quite slowly. As can be imagined, there are a lot of characters even just in the Shen household and it takes a while for the author to explain who everyone is and why they're important to the story. The author also needs to set the background and establish what an idiotic lovestruck reputation Shen Miao has at school and among higher society in general so that her change in temperament and actions has a greater impact.
Once the story gets rolling and we see SM's schemes and counter-schemes against her family come to fruition, it gets much more interesting. The romance moves very slowly though. Even after the ML Xie Jingxing starts taking an interest in her, initially he's just intrigue in her deep schemes and her unfathomable knowledge, and it's not till later that all the flirting starts and much later when the feelings becomes mutual.
I read translations by Chubby Cheeks, which were riddled with grammatical and spelling errors but still readable.
**Warning: Spoilers Ahead**
The story can roughly be divided into three arcs: the first one follows Shen Miao's initial revenge on the Shen family (mostly against the Second Household) up until her family's move to join her maternal Luo family, the second one takes place two years after when the Shen family moves back to the Ding capital again, and the third and final arc follows Shen Miao's move to the Great Liang after marrying XJX and her dealings with a new set of characters there. My favorites were the first two arcs, as SM does a great job of figuring out her family's schemes and countering them every single time, but when she goes to Great Liang in the last arc, she's in a new environment and the story is driven more by larger political changes rather than small schemes.
I have some mixed feelings about this book. The story was engaging for the most part until the last 10-20%, where things started dragging with side characters I didn't care about. I skipped all the scenes between the Great Liang's Emperor and Empress as well as Luo Tan and the physicial Gao Yang. Also, while it was very satisfying to watch Shen Miao get slowly achieve her revenge, I didn't like how there was a very clear cut line drawn between the "good" and the "bad" characters. All of the bad guys were completely ruthless and had no bottom line.
For example, I couldn't believe it when SM's second aunt made plans to let her get raped by Prince Yu, someone with an unsavory and licentious reputation known for playing hard with women and sometimes getting them killed. It's really bad to wish that on anyone, much less someone from your own family. Or how her family was planning to exchange brides and marry SM off to a bad family with a cut-sleeve son while her half-sister would benefit from a marriage to the son of a prestigious family. Or how her older half-brother killed her own sister in jail so that she wouldn't block his career from advancing. It was really too much. The author made her whole Second and Third families into a bunch of scumbags.
The one thing the author never explained was what XJX and Gao Yang found in the hidden room of Prince Yu's estate. I don't know if she forgot about it or what, but I kept expecting that to come up later and she just never went back to it.
Some of my favorite moments:
When SM orchestrates it so that Shen Qing needs to get checked by a doctor and is revealed to be pregnant with Prince Yu's child in the middle of the banquet with the whole Imperial family present
When SM switches Chang Zai Qing's target from her father to her uncle instead, and her aunt didn't even notice when her own man was getting seduced under her own nose
The paragraph-long descriptions of both the ML and FL absolutely killed me though. Half of it didn't even make sense XP
The purple clad youth reached out to remove the mask on his face.
Eyebrows as sharp as swords, eyes that were filled with affection, brave sharp nose and moist lips. It was as if one was a beautiful youth yesterday, but after two years this was truly a handsome and beautiful man. The smile on the ends of his lips was as usual filled with slightly ridicule and unruliness, and there was no longer a brassy youthfulness in his eyes.
That was a type that made one’s heart palpitate deeply, as if it was dark at night, beautiful because of the stars, but terrifying due to the darkness. He was filled with a noble, conceited and elegant air, that reached the pinnacle after two years, and each movement and action was filled with inherent arrogance. The pure moon was usually cold and indifferent, but was as bright as the scorching sun now.
Or this looong description of SM:
In front of the window there sat a young female, she was wearing a deep black silk clothes with a purple tipped skirt. It was an entire body of dark colours, it did not look old-fashioned at all but instead made her skin fair and translucent like jade. The light rain was falling in front of the window and when she heard the sounds, she slightly raised her head, revealing a pretty and delicate face.
Black pupils, graceful brows, pearly teeth and pomegranate lips which were intoxicating like a new moon. It was strange to say that this young female’s appearance was very delicate, as if it was the morning glow of the snow that makes one feel pity, but her warm and smooth hair had an extreme beauty feeling. It was as if she was one who could withstand a great magnanimity. With such a calm bearing, there seemed to be a very different hard look to it, making her look seemingly weak but also a strong person.
She tilted her head and slightly smiled as her eyes moved, this made the other person’s heart tremble, as if this casual smile of hers made this simple study into a jade Palace, and she was a noble sitting at the highest position, looking down faintly at the crowd.