Ravenous (护食) by Ning Yuan (宁远): Review
Apr. 13th, 2024 11:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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baihe_mediaRavenous (护食, pinyin: hu shi), which I would classify as urban fantasy, was a perfect antidote to the disappointment that was The Wayward Disciple (孽徒, pinyin: nie tu), reviewed here. In her author's note to the final chapter of the main novel, Ning Yuan states that she had huge fun writing it, and I definitely believe her: it's a gloriously pulpy trope-laden adventure, with high drama, high stakes and heightened emotions.
The novel begins from the point of view of Lu Jin, a hard-working, up-and-coming actress who's just been nominated for a slate of prestigious best actress awards. At an awards show, she's politely fending off the attentions of the male actor sitting next to her when movie-star-turned-producer Zhao Ci marches up to them and sends the actor packing in short order. Lu Jin is surprised by this, because there's always been a sort of unspoken antipathy between herself and Zhao Ci — the two of them have always taken pains to avoid each other. Just as you think this is going to be a showbiz rivals-to-lovers story, however, things take a turn for the much weirder. Unseen by anyone else, Zhao Ci quietly snarls 'you're mine' to Lu Jin and bites her on the ear, leaving a mark that looks much more like a bite mark from a carnivorous animal than anything human teeth are capable of.
We learn quite soon that the entertainment industry is, in this universe, teeming with demons of all kinds in human form. Zhao Ci is one of them: a formidable fox demon thousands of years old. We also learn that she hasn't eaten a single bite of food (or drunk a single mouthful of water) for the last three thousand years, because she's been cursed never to be able to eat any food except Lu Jin, whom she does not wish to kill.
Eventually, we find out that Lu Jin and Zhao Ci were lovers many, many lifetimes ago. Lu Jin is in fact the Jade Rabbit, a divine creature who lived on the moon as a companion of the goddess Chang'e. In order to be with Zhao Ci, Lu Jin chooses to be stripped of her divine status. The two spend some halcyon times together, but they're eventually betrayed by an enemy and separated. Lu Jin dies, and is flung into the cycle of reincarnation; the aforementioned curse is placed on Zhao Ci (I won't give the details of the circumstances surrounding the curse, but suffice to say that the curse is thematically fitting). Lu Jin lives, dies and is reincarnated again, and Zhao Ci then spends the next three thousand years seeking out her latest reincarnation and watching over her — typically from a distance, so as to stop herself from eating Lu Jin (under the terms of the curse, Lu Jin's soul and life force will be entirely consumed if Zhao Ci eats her, meaning that she'll be lost forever and will no longer be part of the cycle of reincarnation).
So right from the start, this novel is packed full of tropes, and the author deploys them deftly and with great care and love. There's a ton of A-grade yearning, and a lot of hurt/comfort (loads of demons come after Lu Jin, and Zhao Ci has to keep fighting them off, though Lu Jin starts to be able to hold her own as she slowly regains her memories and powers). Lu Jin is actually very a challenging character to write — she starts out as a sort of Standard Ingenue, the bright, mostly sensible girl-next-door, and those are very prone to being written as personality-free reader self-inserts that leave me wondering: but why is the hot powerful woman in love with her? There's no fear of that with Lu Jin: we're shown repeatedly (rather than told, which is again a frequent issue with this kind of character in recent genre novels) that she's kind and brave and determined and intelligent and fundamentally good. She bickers affectionately with her younger sister Lu Mian, firmly, cheerfully and capably sweeps aside all Zhao Ci's attempts at doing the Cold Male Lead thing and shutting her out, laughs and pokes fun at her enemies in the heat of battle. The author also handily redresses the early inequality between her and Zhao Ci (one is a twenty-year-old up-and-coming fully human (as far as she knows) actress; the other is a fox demon who's thousands of years old) by having her bear witness to Zhao Ci's early childhood and their first lifetime together (it transpires that Lu Jin is actually at least a few millennia older than than Zhao Ci), and having her initiate intimacy and sex.
Speaking of sex: it was refreshing to read a couple who are believably incredibly horny for each other (and in doing this the author makes good use of their ah animal characteristics, including a memorable and hilarious scene in which young Lu Jin, in her rabbit form, develops pseudo-pregnancy). A far cry from the decorous chasteness of e.g. Ji Youyan/Jing Xiu from Waiting for You (余情可待, pinyin: yuqing kedai). In fact, both the secondary f/f couples (Zhao Ci's old friend, the half-human, half-phoenix supermodel Yan Feng and Zhao Ci's devoted servant Xiao Su; Lu Jin's sister Lu Mian and her classmate Su Ling) are believably sexual, in their different ways (Yan Feng/Xiao Su in a 'fucking is purely transactional and will never ever lead to feelings OH NO was that a feeling' way; Lu Mian/Su Ling in an endearing, slightly uncertain teenage way).
The plot and the romance are woven effectively together — one pushes the other forward, and vice versa — and the sequencing of big reveals, big action scenes and quieter emotional moments is well done. The reveals and key plot points are pretty well signalled and foreshadowed, and bar one slightly hanging plot thread, I can't think of anything left unresolved. The main novel ends with Zhao Ci somewhat nervously taking her first bite of actual food (a plot-relevant fruit) in three thousand years, and I love that kind of symmetry.
The novel's treatment of disability was a pleasant surprise. I do not typically have high hopes that disability will be dealt with well in c-webnovels (a lot of the discussion around disability that has taken place in Western fan circles and genre fiction circles simply does not seem to have happened yet on the c-webnovel scene). However, this novel surpassed my (admittedly low) expectations. The disabled character here is Lu Mian, Lu Jin's younger sister, who had to have her leg amputated after a horrific car accident in which both their parents died. When Lu Jin was revealed to have mega healing powers (this makes a sort of sense, as the Jade Rabbit is often depicted as compounding medicine), I was fully expecting her to restore Lu Mian's leg by the end of the novel (especially since at one point, she's abducted by a demon whose leg had been amputated and wants her to reconnect it using her powers). This doesn't happen. Instead, we see Lu Mian learning to dance with her prosthetic leg (she had been a keen dancer before the accident) and, as indicated earlier, having a rich love life with Su Ling.
I was also moved by the amount of care all the principal characters (all female) demonstrate towards each other over the course of the novel. Lu Jin and Zhao Ci simply refuse to let miscommunication ever become an issue between them; each of them knows the other so well that they're able to convey 'I'm here, I love you, and will you please stop doing that self-sacrificing thing for just one second, do you think I don't know what you're up to' to each other in many different unspoken ways. There's Lu Jin and Lu Mian's sisterly affection, expressed in classic style through bickering, mild insults (there's a nice bit where Lu Mian notes that they know each other well enough to understand what insults won't hurt), and attempts to save the other doing housework by denigrating her housework skills. There's Xiao Su's stubborn devotion to Zhao Ci. There's half-phoenix Yan Feng, who disapproves of what she sees as Zhao Ci's overly self-sacrificing ways, but can always be relied on to plunge into the fray whenever Zhao Ci gets into another fight with another powerful demon (though, of course, not without an eye-roll and a squawked 'I told you so!'). There's the way Su Ling, Lu Mian's eventual girlfriend, deals with her disability — she's both matter-of-fact about it and also takes extra care to look out for Lu Mian in situations where she might require more accommodations to be made, and she does this quietly and unostentatiously. There's even fixer extraordinaire Fu Yuanyi, who turns up after every major battle to offer Zhao Ci and friends her 'clean-up' services for an extortionate price, but does always turn up — and in the end, is so moved by a good turn Zhao Ci does her that she vows never to charge Zhao Ci any money for services rendered henceforth. There's a thematic appropriateness to this as well, as Zhao Ci and Lu Jin's ultimate enemy turns out to be a woman who betrays this ideal of friendship and care.
I read the Chinese original of the novel here on JJWXC. The title translation is the product of a joint brainstorming session between me,x_los, superborb and momijizukamori (we spent at least 50% of the time groaning 'why is this so HARD' and at least another 40% looking up animal facts).
The novel begins from the point of view of Lu Jin, a hard-working, up-and-coming actress who's just been nominated for a slate of prestigious best actress awards. At an awards show, she's politely fending off the attentions of the male actor sitting next to her when movie-star-turned-producer Zhao Ci marches up to them and sends the actor packing in short order. Lu Jin is surprised by this, because there's always been a sort of unspoken antipathy between herself and Zhao Ci — the two of them have always taken pains to avoid each other. Just as you think this is going to be a showbiz rivals-to-lovers story, however, things take a turn for the much weirder. Unseen by anyone else, Zhao Ci quietly snarls 'you're mine' to Lu Jin and bites her on the ear, leaving a mark that looks much more like a bite mark from a carnivorous animal than anything human teeth are capable of.
We learn quite soon that the entertainment industry is, in this universe, teeming with demons of all kinds in human form. Zhao Ci is one of them: a formidable fox demon thousands of years old. We also learn that she hasn't eaten a single bite of food (or drunk a single mouthful of water) for the last three thousand years, because she's been cursed never to be able to eat any food except Lu Jin, whom she does not wish to kill.
Eventually, we find out that Lu Jin and Zhao Ci were lovers many, many lifetimes ago. Lu Jin is in fact the Jade Rabbit, a divine creature who lived on the moon as a companion of the goddess Chang'e. In order to be with Zhao Ci, Lu Jin chooses to be stripped of her divine status. The two spend some halcyon times together, but they're eventually betrayed by an enemy and separated. Lu Jin dies, and is flung into the cycle of reincarnation; the aforementioned curse is placed on Zhao Ci (I won't give the details of the circumstances surrounding the curse, but suffice to say that the curse is thematically fitting). Lu Jin lives, dies and is reincarnated again, and Zhao Ci then spends the next three thousand years seeking out her latest reincarnation and watching over her — typically from a distance, so as to stop herself from eating Lu Jin (under the terms of the curse, Lu Jin's soul and life force will be entirely consumed if Zhao Ci eats her, meaning that she'll be lost forever and will no longer be part of the cycle of reincarnation).
So right from the start, this novel is packed full of tropes, and the author deploys them deftly and with great care and love. There's a ton of A-grade yearning, and a lot of hurt/comfort (loads of demons come after Lu Jin, and Zhao Ci has to keep fighting them off, though Lu Jin starts to be able to hold her own as she slowly regains her memories and powers). Lu Jin is actually very a challenging character to write — she starts out as a sort of Standard Ingenue, the bright, mostly sensible girl-next-door, and those are very prone to being written as personality-free reader self-inserts that leave me wondering: but why is the hot powerful woman in love with her? There's no fear of that with Lu Jin: we're shown repeatedly (rather than told, which is again a frequent issue with this kind of character in recent genre novels) that she's kind and brave and determined and intelligent and fundamentally good. She bickers affectionately with her younger sister Lu Mian, firmly, cheerfully and capably sweeps aside all Zhao Ci's attempts at doing the Cold Male Lead thing and shutting her out, laughs and pokes fun at her enemies in the heat of battle. The author also handily redresses the early inequality between her and Zhao Ci (one is a twenty-year-old up-and-coming fully human (as far as she knows) actress; the other is a fox demon who's thousands of years old) by having her bear witness to Zhao Ci's early childhood and their first lifetime together (it transpires that Lu Jin is actually at least a few millennia older than than Zhao Ci), and having her initiate intimacy and sex.
Speaking of sex: it was refreshing to read a couple who are believably incredibly horny for each other (and in doing this the author makes good use of their ah animal characteristics, including a memorable and hilarious scene in which young Lu Jin, in her rabbit form, develops pseudo-pregnancy). A far cry from the decorous chasteness of e.g. Ji Youyan/Jing Xiu from Waiting for You (余情可待, pinyin: yuqing kedai). In fact, both the secondary f/f couples (Zhao Ci's old friend, the half-human, half-phoenix supermodel Yan Feng and Zhao Ci's devoted servant Xiao Su; Lu Jin's sister Lu Mian and her classmate Su Ling) are believably sexual, in their different ways (Yan Feng/Xiao Su in a 'fucking is purely transactional and will never ever lead to feelings OH NO was that a feeling' way; Lu Mian/Su Ling in an endearing, slightly uncertain teenage way).
The plot and the romance are woven effectively together — one pushes the other forward, and vice versa — and the sequencing of big reveals, big action scenes and quieter emotional moments is well done. The reveals and key plot points are pretty well signalled and foreshadowed, and bar one slightly hanging plot thread, I can't think of anything left unresolved. The main novel ends with Zhao Ci somewhat nervously taking her first bite of actual food (a plot-relevant fruit) in three thousand years, and I love that kind of symmetry.
The novel's treatment of disability was a pleasant surprise. I do not typically have high hopes that disability will be dealt with well in c-webnovels (a lot of the discussion around disability that has taken place in Western fan circles and genre fiction circles simply does not seem to have happened yet on the c-webnovel scene). However, this novel surpassed my (admittedly low) expectations. The disabled character here is Lu Mian, Lu Jin's younger sister, who had to have her leg amputated after a horrific car accident in which both their parents died. When Lu Jin was revealed to have mega healing powers (this makes a sort of sense, as the Jade Rabbit is often depicted as compounding medicine), I was fully expecting her to restore Lu Mian's leg by the end of the novel (especially since at one point, she's abducted by a demon whose leg had been amputated and wants her to reconnect it using her powers). This doesn't happen. Instead, we see Lu Mian learning to dance with her prosthetic leg (she had been a keen dancer before the accident) and, as indicated earlier, having a rich love life with Su Ling.
I was also moved by the amount of care all the principal characters (all female) demonstrate towards each other over the course of the novel. Lu Jin and Zhao Ci simply refuse to let miscommunication ever become an issue between them; each of them knows the other so well that they're able to convey 'I'm here, I love you, and will you please stop doing that self-sacrificing thing for just one second, do you think I don't know what you're up to' to each other in many different unspoken ways. There's Lu Jin and Lu Mian's sisterly affection, expressed in classic style through bickering, mild insults (there's a nice bit where Lu Mian notes that they know each other well enough to understand what insults won't hurt), and attempts to save the other doing housework by denigrating her housework skills. There's Xiao Su's stubborn devotion to Zhao Ci. There's half-phoenix Yan Feng, who disapproves of what she sees as Zhao Ci's overly self-sacrificing ways, but can always be relied on to plunge into the fray whenever Zhao Ci gets into another fight with another powerful demon (though, of course, not without an eye-roll and a squawked 'I told you so!'). There's the way Su Ling, Lu Mian's eventual girlfriend, deals with her disability — she's both matter-of-fact about it and also takes extra care to look out for Lu Mian in situations where she might require more accommodations to be made, and she does this quietly and unostentatiously. There's even fixer extraordinaire Fu Yuanyi, who turns up after every major battle to offer Zhao Ci and friends her 'clean-up' services for an extortionate price, but does always turn up — and in the end, is so moved by a good turn Zhao Ci does her that she vows never to charge Zhao Ci any money for services rendered henceforth. There's a thematic appropriateness to this as well, as Zhao Ci and Lu Jin's ultimate enemy turns out to be a woman who betrays this ideal of friendship and care.
I read the Chinese original of the novel here on JJWXC. The title translation is the product of a joint brainstorming session between me,
x_los, superborb and momijizukamori (we spent at least 50% of the time groaning 'why is this so HARD' and at least another 40% looking up animal facts).
no subject
Date: 2024-04-13 02:40 pm (UTC)You seem to really favor this author. Do you find that her various books differ enough to be interesting in their own right or are they noticeably in the same vein? Hmm, hope that question made sense.
Anyway, thanks again for this review. I always appreciate reading them and feel very satisfied even if I may never get to read the book myself.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-14 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-14 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-13 03:43 pm (UTC)I know the bar is low but the depiction of disability really makes a lot of difference.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-14 07:32 pm (UTC)I'm seriously considering translating this after I (finally) finish translating Purely by Accident simply because I need to inflict it on as many people as possible. Although the magic/cultivation terms are going to be a new challenge.
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Date: 2024-04-14 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-17 07:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-16 02:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-17 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-15 10:18 am (UTC)