Middle-Aged Love Patch (中年恋爱补丁): Pre-Orders Open

[douqi]

Pre-orders opened today for the print edition of Ning Yuan's futuristic, VR-themed novel Middle-Aged Love Patch (中年恋爱补丁, pinyin: zhongnian lian'ai buding). This edition is from Taiwanese publisher morefate and is in traditional Chinese and uncensored. The pre-order period runs until 15 July. More details of the cover art and publisher-provided merch can be found on the publisher's website here. There's a standard edition, which comes with seven postcards, and a special edition, which comes with everything that the standard edition comes with plus an illustrated print, acrylic standees of the main characters, an A5-sized poster, an acrylic cube, a set of illustrated cards, a transparent PVC card, and a special book box.

Agents that handle this title and ship worldwide include Kakitono (link goes to their Facebook page where you can message them to pre-order) and Feiqin (link goes to their online shopfront).

Middle-Aged Love Patch starts with the protagonist Xu Youyuan (who is 34 years old, which I guess is arguably on the very very lower end of middle age?), who has been tasked with designing a romance game, reluctantly deciding she needs to experience some romance herself in order to do this. She logs on to a top-rated VR dating website, and finds herself paired up with Shi Yue — her friend's younger sister, who has had a crush on her since forever. You can read the original novel on JJWXC here. There is also a manhua adaptation, a fan translation of which can be found here.

Ning Yuan is one of longest-established and most prolific authors on the baihe scene, and has written novels in multiple genres. Her latest title, which is currently serialising, is the historical cyberpunk novel To Embers We Return (焚情, pinyin: fen qing), which we're doing a read-along of here.