Review: Heaven Official's Blessing by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù
I very much did not like this reading experience. If you don't want to hear someone say nothing nice about a thing you love, feel free not to keep reading. The only reason I made it past the prologue is that I organized a book club that is reading this book, and I didn't want to drop out on literally the first book we read.
I think I hate both the writing style and the translation. I don't know which complaints are indicative of which person because I cannot read the original. Still, I am absolutely certain I will never read anything translated by Suika again. I found the language incredibly clunky throughout the entire book. I thought the phrasing was awkward, occasionally there were completely unnecessary prepositions, the language got repetitive in a way that I assume makes total sense in the original, but I felt it could have been translated much more elegantly. I do see that many people love this book, but I found it almost totally unreadable. Obviously, I had to say almost because I did technically read most of it. I skimmed occasionally but more on that later.
This book rockets wildly between a conversational chaotic, almost internet-ish way of speaking and incredibly formal; it was just unpleasant for me to read. I felt like I was reading something approaching cohesiveness, then it would seem like a completely different person would interject and start writing. I just found it disconcerting to read. There are lots of exclamation points, a punctuation mark I do love, and all-caps interjections. I thought it was shooting for charming but landed, for me, as childish or inconsistent.
The beginning of this book is a solid wall of info-dumping. I found it unengaging and wished it had been more blended into the later story because I just started completely mind-numbed. It felt very Frankenstein in the way that the author kept telling the reader that something interesting happened but totally did not let the reader actually experience any of that interesting stuff at all. I was continuously frustrated by glossing over stuff that I would have loved to read about. I didn't ever quite like the writing style; I continuously found it to lack description and avoid the aspects of the story I found interesting.
My other problem with this reading experience was I found it very predictable. I thought the foreshadowing was very heavy-handed. I could excuse this if it was written for a very young audience, but it seems to be marketed at adults, but I continuously felt like the author did not expect me to be able to put anything together on my own. I was particularly frustrated that the San Lang revel took as long as it did. I had begun skimming when we officially met him, and I immediately knew what his twist was going to be. I feel like if I was skimming and picking up on things, they were way too obvious. I did revert to properly reading, but I was never fully engaged with this story.
I am going to dive into the positive review of this book because it is so contradictory to my reading experience of this book. I am so curious to try and see what about this book captured so many people. It just didn't work for me.
Minor complaints about the book here! I thought the economics of this world were nonsensical. I personally hate it when people suck the venom out of other people; it does not actually work and can be harmful to both parties (yes, I understand why that is not really valid in this case, but I still hate the trope). I also hated the way almost every woman in this book was so one-note. I thought it was weird that occasionally there were replacement words for cursing, and sometimes the book would use the actual curse words, another place I was annoyed by inconsistency. And lastly, I thought the 'wanting to save the common people' motivation felt very surface and like it was just there, so I would think the main character was heroic. It just felt tacked on in an odd way.
This book was not for me; that is okay. I hope if you read it that this book works for you.
