Renoir > Recent Status Updates

In this chapter, Lian says she used to call the princess "Older Sister". This proves my critique to be right. In chapter 1, Ning's sister doesn't call Ning with "older sister". Again, am I somehow reading an ARC or a defective digital copy? I was sure I wasn't ,since the official preview in Amazon had the same thing.

Okay, so here is the brief description of how the magic works. Something about souls connecting. But again, in the contest, someone performed a "flashy" magic where the smoke formed the shape of a dragon. I still don't know what exactly is the magic of tea. In this part it's made to sound like the tea only channels the magic, but in the other parts it sounded like the tea itself is magic.

The princess just casually invited Ning to her room. Okay, I've never been to an actual inhabited palace or anything, but this is the third novel set in some Chinese palace where everything just feels so lax. I would've thought that the imperial family would be much more heavily guarded than this. And the princess, even if she can fight to defend herself, why does she trust Ning so much??

Is Tourmaline supposed to be Zhao Yun

The choices of when to let the names remain Chinese and when to change it into something more "Western" is... well. "Shencius" is such a weird-sounding name. I'm assuming if this was reverted to "Chinese" it would become Sheng Zi, like how Meng Zi becomes Mencius and Kong Fu Zi is Confucius.

I cheated and looked at the end notes first because I don't want to go insane trying to puzzle out which character maps to which OG Three Kingdoms character. I was wondering if Crow was the Sima Yi expy, and it just feels so weird even for an enemy to lovers plot. I'm mollified that he's actually Zhou Yu. That's... kind of less weird for me.

I'm liking this so far, but there's a few awkward moments that felt forced to me. I got this as an ARC, so is this still on beta stage?

The novels I've read with fantasy Japan vibes, usually based on a mix of Edo and Sengoku eras, it kind of feels like the authors tend to think the whole country looks like Shirakawa-go and it's nothing but forests everywhere. I don't know, maybe I'm just not reading the right books. I don't see Japanese-inspired books very often. There are far less of those compared to the Chinese-inspired ones.

There's a lot of indie/Kindle books with such pretty covers! Sadly the blurbs doesn't sound like they're really the type of books I tend to prefer.

Also, the palace is so tiny! Something of that size is probably just a provincial governor's mansion. Like, even compared to just the Forbidden City palace, the map shows an area that just seems so tiny. Is the map not supposed to show the full palace area? Just wondering.

I have Questions about the dragons' cardinal directions. Rat is traditionally direct North, but here Ox is the one that's on the North. Is the author trying to also fuse this with the 4 divine beasts and have the Dragon-Dragon be on the East? But for this book's age, I guess I can allow it.

Pre-read: You know I actually read the second book Eona many years ago, but never read the first book. I should reread the two again in proper order to give this a fair review. I did find it very weird to name the dragons by the zodiac. It's a nice idea, but "Rat dragon" sounds really silly. Also the naming convention is "fantasy garble" with no apparent set rules, which is not really my cup of tea.

The drowning scene is so forced... Also, huh??? Kang's birth father is an army commander? Then who is the prince? His adopted father?

Battle of Red Rain? Guan Yong? Subtle Three Kingdoms reference, I see. That's actually kind of cute.

Oh, okay, there's the reference to Shennong teaching farming too. Still, the hyperfocus on the tea using the Shennong name feels off to me.

Another cliché of the spunky heroine just mouthing off to authorities and the authority just says "Eh, it's fine". Ning says it's against her nature to beg for forgiveness for her survival, but she was clearly fine with kowtowing to the Marquis because he's obviously dangerous. But the PRINCESS is fair game? Rude.

I'm so fed up of mean girl bully type drama. Here, the billies are male, but same difference. This is 2022, people. Do you writers not have any better ideas? It's cheap and overdone.

Okay, so there's been a few references about how the heroine's family is so poor they sometimes go hungry. Some references about where the governor is oh so awful, and could even be said to be tyrannical. I don't know if it's the fault of the dry narration, but again, I NEVER GOT THAT SENSE. In the start it felt like the heroine was living a not-well-to-do, but otherwise idyllic village life.

What did she even do? So far I still have no idea how the magic is done. She literally just poured water on tea like a normal tea.

GIRLS, YOU'RE TALKING AMONG YOURSELVES AND WITH THE SERVANT. TALK LIKE NORMAL HUMAN BEINGS. YOU SOUND LIKE SOMEONE TRYING TO MAKE A SPEECH. I will never make it through this book at this rate.
Like one of the narration says "sputtering through my mirth". A less stiff alternative might be "I sputter between laughter" or something.

Help, I'm so bored. I don't want to review a book without finishing, but this is so boring. The prose feels like it's trying to be poetic, but only ends up sounding overly formal and stiff, like a school essay or something.

If I ever see a review on a book with a "feudal Japan-inspired" setting say that it's "based on the Edo era" one more time I will have aneurysm. The shogun, samurai, and feudal lords has been around since BEFORE the first Edo shogun was even a twinkle in his father's eye. To be fair, it's true that a lot of samurai novels are a messy jumble of the Warring States and the Edo period, but come on.

"It felt like I was a child again, getting hit... etc". Editor. Did you not realize this sounds stiff as hell? This is weird. Unless this is a hint that the friend is secretly a noble, and she slips into overly flowery languages, this is bad.

Flowing sleeves is the latest fashion? As opposed to... just being how rich people has always dressed? It could just be a weird phrasing, I guess, but I don't believe hanfu fashion is just like "oh let's all randomly have big sleeves one day", and this bothers me. Like, does the governor back home not have huge sleeves?

"Break our backs under the governor's yoke". Uh, I dunno, I never got the impression that the governor was harsh or cruel. Did I miss something? If this is just an expression to say they "serve him", then either this is a translation of a Chinese phrase I didn't know of, or the author is using an inappropriately exaggerated description.

... I'm not sure I'm more bothered by the lax security, or just the tendency of YA authors to want the non-nobility leads to hang out with the servants because it's more comfortable. After all that rigourous security at the front door, you'd expect guards to be there to make sure nobody tampers with food. Are nobody concerned that these two girls would poison someone? Or are they counting on some notion of "honour"?

And nobody's surprised by this revelation, LMAO. Honestly. Was that supposed to be a surprise, or is this the kind of story where WE readers know from miles away but we're supposed to watch with anticipation for the book characters to catch up?

Congee. CONGEE. Y'all made a big fuss over dumplings being stereotypical and you have stereotypical congee with chicken strips for breakfast? I mean, fine, maybe it is in fact Historically Accurate (TM) for even imperial Chinese people to have congee for breakfast, but I somehow expected something more creative after all that fuss about the food.

And then there's that "action" bit. It makes me wonder if the author glossed over that description to shuffle along towards this. It's maddening. I understand that you don't have to over-describe, lest you bog down the text with useless detail, but this one just felt ugh.

There it is again! A dispassionate description of emotion. This is not how you describe "I'm mad as hell, but I'm scared of losing my head". This sounds as bored as someone having to wait 5 extra minutes at McD.
I really liked the description of the poetry, and it was all ruined by this.