WWW Wednesday

1. What I'm Reading Now

• How to Survive as a Villain vol. 1 by Yi Yi Yi Yi (currently reading): for those who follow danmei stuff, this is the first volume in English from Rosmei in Singapore to ship. And I have been d.e.v.o.u.r.i.n.g. it. For those like me concerned about the translation quality, while I as always can't speak to the fidelity to the original Chinese, in terms of English SPAG and word choice and readability, it's comparable to the Seven Seas titles and better than the Via Lactea ones (Peach Flower House titles have all fallen between those two extremes and have been less consistent). I've only noticed a handful of SPAG issues and a comparable number of word choices that I was a little "uhhh" over. And in terms of the book itself, I'm really enjoying it, it feels quite similar to SVSSS, minus the presence of a System, and with a mc transmigrator who, instead of being a dork, was raised to be The Perfect Rakish CEO (and hated his upbringing), and he's been transmigrated as an emperor. It also appears to be developing a side canon yuri ship??? Though where I'm at right now (about 2/3rds through vol. 1) the tension is starting to rachet up in the "nothing much has happened yet but it's clear shit gonna hit the fan..." kinda way. It's been kinda clowny and light this first volume but I have some suspicions that it ain't gonna stay that way. Only vol. 1 is out in English but I planned ahead - I have an epub of the fantranslation so I won't have to stop. 

• Legend of Condor Heroes by Jin Yong (currently reading): I read Chapter 6! Continuing to really enjoy it. (Each chapter is like 25k long so reading one chapter a week, while reading other stuff, is about all I can manage)

2. What I Read This Week

• The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison: I finally slogged through the rest and finished! The last third or so was a bit more engaging than what had gone before, but in the end, I just couldn't find this book all that interesting. It's billed as politics, but while political things happen there's no actual...politicking? It kinda reminds me of the first Cairhien chapters in Wheel of Time, when Rand goes to the great game of houses dinner and it's been built up as "these people are soooooo good at politics" and then the lord he speaks to is just the most useless, obvious, clumsy loser at this politics stuff... except at least there's a built in plot reason that's the case in WoT, whereas in this story, I'm just supposed to...buy it, I guess. Also not a single one of the side characters felt realized. I was having trouble pinning it down, but then I read some of the other negative reviews, and one of them said something like, "all the characters are either 'they like Maia and are kind to him and are a good person,' or 'they don't like Maia and they aren't kind to him and they are a bad person,'" and...yeah. None of them have their own inner lives or backstories or anything. I'm pretty disappointed, all in all, I was really expecting to like this book and I really really didn't. It wasn't bad, to be clear, it just definitely wasn't for me.
   
• Snapdragon by Kat Leyh (graphic novel, modern with magic horror, trans side character, wlw side characters, found family): this was a surprise gem, I thought it was REALLY good. It's about a teen girl, Snapdragon, who goes to find her missing dog and instead finds the towns old "witch" everyone thinks is evil, and they strike up an unlikely friendship. Snap's bff is a trans woman, and the old "witch" is wlw.
   
• The Hills of Estrella Roja by Ashley Robin Frankling (graphic novel, modern with magic horror, wlw): I really liked this one too, and the only reason I didn't give it more than 4   is that, like, the plot instigator never actually gets explained/answered??? and no one even comments on it??? and that was very odd to me. About a young (vaguely butch) high school senior who goes back to her home town Estrella Roja for her grandmother's funeral, and about a college freshman who loves paranormal stuff going to the same town, and the two meeting and deciding to try to figure out wtf is going on together.
   
• Little Mushroom manhua vol. 1 by Yi Shi Si Zhou (manhua, dystopian sci-fi, mlm/danmei, not from the library): I've read the book of this, and had read the first chapter of the manhua online at Kuaikan. My copy from Koon Books arrived a couple days ago, and I decided I'd just flip through it for fun and instead just...read the whole thing??? Or, well, I skimmed a few pages as my the "able to process Chinese" part of my brain started to get fatigued, or when I got too discouraged by a specific passage, but overall I was able to read a shockingly large amount of it, enough that I decided I could reasonably count it as "read." This is the first book I've ever just sat down with and read cover to cover that was in Chinese (I've done a decent amount of TGCF Vol. 1 but was going slower and using a dictionary and so have never actually finished, oops). ngl I'm pretty proud of myself, and I was kinda shocked how much I could follow.

3. What I'm Reading Next

Within the next week, two loans from the Japanese Foundation Library (Akayona vol. 3 and BNHA vol. 15) are due so I gotta read those. My next-up graphic novel from the library is Flamer by Mike Curato. For books, I don't expect to finish either of my current reads this week.