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baihe_mediaI started reading this novel because, frankly, who can resist the premise of 'the protagonist transmigrates into a xuanhuan novel... and into the body of the villainess' pet alpaca'. It was a delightful experience, and I'd even go so far as to call the novel wholesome although parts of it are objectively harrowing. It does also vibe quite a bit more Young Adult (in the current Anglo publishing sense) than most baihe novels I've read so far (with the possible of exception Her Mountain, Her Sea (她的山, 她的海, pinyin: ta de shan, ta de hai), which is literally a high school novel), though the prose and plotting are more sophisticated than the recent YA fantasy books I've read, and even some of the marketed-as-adult recent fantasy releases I've encountered.
Our protagonist is Yi Qiu, a twenty-eight-year-old single woman with a tedious, unremarkable office job, living in a cramped, dilapidated rented studio apartment, with parents she tries to avoid spending too much time around because they continually compare her unfavourably to the more successful children of friends and relatives. Her main hobby is reading webnovels — she's one of those very active readers that authors seem to like, the kind who leave long, thoughtful comments and start discussions about plot points. The webnovel she transmigrates into is a xuanhuan yanqing novel entitled A Thin, Withered Bough by a well-known author called Little Cooing Bird. This particular novel represents a big change in style for Cooing Bird, who was previously known for fluffy contemporary romances.
When A Thin, Withered Bough began serialising, Cooing Bird promised her readers rich lore, ambitious world-building and complex characters. The male lead of the novel-within-the-novel, Luo Mingyuan, is the human reincarnation of the mythological Three-Legged Crow, son of the Heavenly Mortal, who was consigned to the mortal realm for ten lifetimes as punishment for crafting ten suns and allowing them to run riot across the land. The female lead, Jiang Yuyao, is the human reincarnation of the divine Fusang tree, in whose branches the Three-Legged Crow used to roost. Both of them end up being reincarnated as disciples of the Luxian Sect. The novel-within-the-novel ends in tragedy, with both Luo Mingyuan and Jiang Yuyao — and a whole host of secondary characters — falling prey to the manipulative schemes of the demonic villainess You Yan. Luo Mingyuan falls to the dark side, and is used by You Yan to turn the mortal realm into a literal hell on earth. Jiang Yuyao curses him before she dies, and gives up all her future reincarnations in return for the ability to haunt Luo Mingyuan forever. The novel is wrapped up hastily with You Yan, the villainess, reigning triumphant over the world, and a lot of plot threads are simply abandoned.
Yi Qiu, who had been following the novel avidly since it began serialising, is livid. She gives the novel a low rating, thinks angrily that she could have written it a hundred times better, goes to get a drink of warm water, and promptly chokes on it and loses consciousness. When she comes to, she finds herself in the world of the novel, and specifically in the body of You Yan's pet alpaca. The voice of the System cheerfully informs her that her mission, which she has no choice about accepting, is to rewrite the story of A Thin, Withered Bough so that it 'leads logically to a happy ending'. The System also promises Yi Qiu that she'll be able to gain human form once her relationship score with the villainess, You Yan, hits 1,000 points. Yi Qiu, who remembers all too well the fate of the alpaca from the novel-within-the-novel — slaughtered, cooked and eaten by You Yan once she got tired of it — has no choice but to try and ingratiate herself with You Yan, while also making sure she gets enough to eat (difficulty level: she can't bring herself to eat grass or hay, yet that's what You Yan's minions bring her) and regular baths (all that fur gets dirty pretty quickly). Shenanigans ensue.
The relationship between Yi Qiu and You Yan is a genuine slow burn, with a good half of the development taking place while Yi Qiu is still in alpaca form (for the curious among you: no, there is no alpaca sex, or any on-page sex, as You Yan has unexpectedly old-fashioned views on premarital sex). While the novel is told in third person, we get almost all of it from Yi Qiu's POV, which I found quite unusual in a c-novel. In her alpaca form, Yi Qiu flips between being scared of You Yan and being unable to resist sassing her, the latter of which You Yan seems to enjoy (the first time Yi Qiu spits at You Yan, for instance, her relationship score with You Yan actually increases, to her great surprise and mystification). Through her misadventures in You Yan's palace, Yi Qiu's various ability scores soon increase to the point where she regains the ability to speak, though she doesn't regain human form until about a third of the way through the novel. You Yan takes all of these developments in stride — Yi Qiu assumes that You Yan believes her to be an alpaca who has cultivated to sentience, though You Yan drops the occasional hint that she knows (or guesses) more than she lets on. Their dynamic involves a lot of mutual bickering, particularly once Yi Qiu realises that You Yan's threats of eating her are basically hollow, which I found very fun to read. There's a screamingly funny early section where Yi Qiu complains about the heat, and You Yan suggests shearing her. Yi Qiu, horrified at the idea of looking like a clipped poodle, reflexively spits at You Yan, is then mortified at what she's done, and tries and fails to wipe the spit off with her foot.
Yi Qiu is written very vividly and entertainingly, and the author does a great job of conveying just how cute she is in her alpaca form. There are great descriptions of, e.g. the greedy little alpaca gleefully scarfing down food, propping her head at the foot of You Yan's bed and gazing at her with beseeching eyes, trying fruitlessly to clean up messes she's accidentally made with her feet (alpaca have feet, not hooves, a thing which I've learned from this novel), tilting her head and craning her long neck quizzically, curling up into a white woolly ball. The author also uses little turns of phrase which remind the reader what form Yi Qiu is in — e.g. at one point, Yi Qiu decides she's going to be a 'three good' alpaca, a play on 'three good' student — i.e. a model student who has excellent morals, academics and physical health.
You Yan is, in some ways, a familiar type. In her original form, she's a Qinyuan bird, a mythological creature about the size of a mandarin duck, which looks similar to a bee (and has a bee's sting) but with feathered wings. However, she was born different from other Qinyuan birds — she literally ate her way out of her mother's womb, killing her mother in the process, which caused her to be ostracised by her clan (including her father) from birth. Realising that her clan, and virtually everybody else around her, considered her to be evil beyond redemption for something she couldn't have controlled, was what motivated her (in the original version of the novel-within-the-novel) to destroy Luo Mingyuan and Jiang Yuyao's lives — to prove that even divine beings like them were capable of great evil. What sets You Yan apart from the standard bad boy (or bad girl) love interest is that her personality is very well-realised — she has a wicked sense of humour (and especially loves teasing Yi Qiu), has a kind of refreshingly direct approach to solving problems (at one point, when she and Yi Qiu are trying to get Luo Mingyuan to leave the Luxian Sect, she suggests that she can simply kidnap him and drop him at a spot some distance away, Yi Qiu frets that Luo Mingyuan will simply make his way back home, and You Yan responds 'not if I break his leg', and then does exactly that), and is remarkably respectful of boundaries and keen on the principle of free and informed choice, even where her enemies are concerned.
The essential plot arc of the story is also a familiar one: You Yan is, over time, so changed by Yi Qiu's love that she moves away from her original destructive path, and it's that which begins setting the world of the story to rights, ultimately leading to a happy ending for everyone involved. The author, however, executes this so earnestly and so charmingly (earnestness being a quality that seems in short supply in recent Anglo genre fiction) that it feels fresh, and never in a way that makes Yi Qiu seem like an unbearable Mary Sue — she's just an extremely well-meaning, occasionally sarcastic, generally kind and often hapless little alpaca girl. The changes that Yi Qiu brings about have positive effects not just on You Yan and the other main characters of the novel-within-the-novel, but also many of the minor characters. For instance, one of Luo Mingyuan's shixiong is depicted in the original novel as succumbing to You Yan's manipulations due to his burning jealousy of Luo Mingyuan. In the altered version of the novel, however, he treats Luo Mingyuan with grace and kindness, and even gets a heroic moment in his own right. Even nameless members of the Luxian Sect eventually set aside their prejudices against You Yan (and demons generally) and treat both her and Yi Qiu as friends and allies.
The clear message of the novel is: no one is beyond redemption as long as there's one person who cares enough about them to try. It demonstrates this not just through Yi Qiu and You Yan's relationship, but also through three other parallel romantic relationships: Luo Mingyuan and Jiang Yuyao, Jianli and Yuezhou (who are actually the mythological beasts Fuzhu and Huodou, the latter of whom Yi Qiu nicknames 'little hot dog'), and Goumang, the goddess of wood and spring and the bird demon Yusuo, the latter of whom inherits much of You Yan's plot function as antagonist. I suppose one could criticise the fact that Yusuo, despite being the new antagonist of the novel-within-the-novel, doesn't get enough screen time, and is basically silent during the climactic final confrontation with our heroes, but the rest of the story was strong and on-theme enough that I didn't mind overmuch.
In addition to romantic love, friendship is also given weight. Towards the end of the novel, You Yan and Yi Qiu sneak off to the demonic realm to try and resolve a tense situation between the divine and demonic forces, only to find Luo Mingyuan and Jiang Yuyao already there, waiting to lend a hand, because 'we knew you were going to try and do this alone, and we couldn't let that happen to our friends'. I found that genuinely moving. Also both entertaining and heartfelt are Yi Qiu's interactions with Jiang Yuyao, Luo Mingyuan and the rest of the Luxian Sect (there's a cute bit where she tries to cheer a very depressed Luo Mingyuan up by graciously allowing him to ruffle her fur, and another one where she teases Jiang Yuyao over the latter's budding relationship with Lu Mingyuan), and You Yan's constant (unconvincing) assertions that she cares nothing about them, often made just before she does something to help them.
I read the uncensored print edition of the novel by morefate, which also has a bonus post-ending extra chapter. The web version of the novel can be found here on JJWXC.
Our protagonist is Yi Qiu, a twenty-eight-year-old single woman with a tedious, unremarkable office job, living in a cramped, dilapidated rented studio apartment, with parents she tries to avoid spending too much time around because they continually compare her unfavourably to the more successful children of friends and relatives. Her main hobby is reading webnovels — she's one of those very active readers that authors seem to like, the kind who leave long, thoughtful comments and start discussions about plot points. The webnovel she transmigrates into is a xuanhuan yanqing novel entitled A Thin, Withered Bough by a well-known author called Little Cooing Bird. This particular novel represents a big change in style for Cooing Bird, who was previously known for fluffy contemporary romances.
When A Thin, Withered Bough began serialising, Cooing Bird promised her readers rich lore, ambitious world-building and complex characters. The male lead of the novel-within-the-novel, Luo Mingyuan, is the human reincarnation of the mythological Three-Legged Crow, son of the Heavenly Mortal, who was consigned to the mortal realm for ten lifetimes as punishment for crafting ten suns and allowing them to run riot across the land. The female lead, Jiang Yuyao, is the human reincarnation of the divine Fusang tree, in whose branches the Three-Legged Crow used to roost. Both of them end up being reincarnated as disciples of the Luxian Sect. The novel-within-the-novel ends in tragedy, with both Luo Mingyuan and Jiang Yuyao — and a whole host of secondary characters — falling prey to the manipulative schemes of the demonic villainess You Yan. Luo Mingyuan falls to the dark side, and is used by You Yan to turn the mortal realm into a literal hell on earth. Jiang Yuyao curses him before she dies, and gives up all her future reincarnations in return for the ability to haunt Luo Mingyuan forever. The novel is wrapped up hastily with You Yan, the villainess, reigning triumphant over the world, and a lot of plot threads are simply abandoned.
Yi Qiu, who had been following the novel avidly since it began serialising, is livid. She gives the novel a low rating, thinks angrily that she could have written it a hundred times better, goes to get a drink of warm water, and promptly chokes on it and loses consciousness. When she comes to, she finds herself in the world of the novel, and specifically in the body of You Yan's pet alpaca. The voice of the System cheerfully informs her that her mission, which she has no choice about accepting, is to rewrite the story of A Thin, Withered Bough so that it 'leads logically to a happy ending'. The System also promises Yi Qiu that she'll be able to gain human form once her relationship score with the villainess, You Yan, hits 1,000 points. Yi Qiu, who remembers all too well the fate of the alpaca from the novel-within-the-novel — slaughtered, cooked and eaten by You Yan once she got tired of it — has no choice but to try and ingratiate herself with You Yan, while also making sure she gets enough to eat (difficulty level: she can't bring herself to eat grass or hay, yet that's what You Yan's minions bring her) and regular baths (all that fur gets dirty pretty quickly). Shenanigans ensue.
The relationship between Yi Qiu and You Yan is a genuine slow burn, with a good half of the development taking place while Yi Qiu is still in alpaca form (for the curious among you: no, there is no alpaca sex, or any on-page sex, as You Yan has unexpectedly old-fashioned views on premarital sex). While the novel is told in third person, we get almost all of it from Yi Qiu's POV, which I found quite unusual in a c-novel. In her alpaca form, Yi Qiu flips between being scared of You Yan and being unable to resist sassing her, the latter of which You Yan seems to enjoy (the first time Yi Qiu spits at You Yan, for instance, her relationship score with You Yan actually increases, to her great surprise and mystification). Through her misadventures in You Yan's palace, Yi Qiu's various ability scores soon increase to the point where she regains the ability to speak, though she doesn't regain human form until about a third of the way through the novel. You Yan takes all of these developments in stride — Yi Qiu assumes that You Yan believes her to be an alpaca who has cultivated to sentience, though You Yan drops the occasional hint that she knows (or guesses) more than she lets on. Their dynamic involves a lot of mutual bickering, particularly once Yi Qiu realises that You Yan's threats of eating her are basically hollow, which I found very fun to read. There's a screamingly funny early section where Yi Qiu complains about the heat, and You Yan suggests shearing her. Yi Qiu, horrified at the idea of looking like a clipped poodle, reflexively spits at You Yan, is then mortified at what she's done, and tries and fails to wipe the spit off with her foot.
Yi Qiu is written very vividly and entertainingly, and the author does a great job of conveying just how cute she is in her alpaca form. There are great descriptions of, e.g. the greedy little alpaca gleefully scarfing down food, propping her head at the foot of You Yan's bed and gazing at her with beseeching eyes, trying fruitlessly to clean up messes she's accidentally made with her feet (alpaca have feet, not hooves, a thing which I've learned from this novel), tilting her head and craning her long neck quizzically, curling up into a white woolly ball. The author also uses little turns of phrase which remind the reader what form Yi Qiu is in — e.g. at one point, Yi Qiu decides she's going to be a 'three good' alpaca, a play on 'three good' student — i.e. a model student who has excellent morals, academics and physical health.
You Yan is, in some ways, a familiar type. In her original form, she's a Qinyuan bird, a mythological creature about the size of a mandarin duck, which looks similar to a bee (and has a bee's sting) but with feathered wings. However, she was born different from other Qinyuan birds — she literally ate her way out of her mother's womb, killing her mother in the process, which caused her to be ostracised by her clan (including her father) from birth. Realising that her clan, and virtually everybody else around her, considered her to be evil beyond redemption for something she couldn't have controlled, was what motivated her (in the original version of the novel-within-the-novel) to destroy Luo Mingyuan and Jiang Yuyao's lives — to prove that even divine beings like them were capable of great evil. What sets You Yan apart from the standard bad boy (or bad girl) love interest is that her personality is very well-realised — she has a wicked sense of humour (and especially loves teasing Yi Qiu), has a kind of refreshingly direct approach to solving problems (at one point, when she and Yi Qiu are trying to get Luo Mingyuan to leave the Luxian Sect, she suggests that she can simply kidnap him and drop him at a spot some distance away, Yi Qiu frets that Luo Mingyuan will simply make his way back home, and You Yan responds 'not if I break his leg', and then does exactly that), and is remarkably respectful of boundaries and keen on the principle of free and informed choice, even where her enemies are concerned.
The essential plot arc of the story is also a familiar one: You Yan is, over time, so changed by Yi Qiu's love that she moves away from her original destructive path, and it's that which begins setting the world of the story to rights, ultimately leading to a happy ending for everyone involved. The author, however, executes this so earnestly and so charmingly (earnestness being a quality that seems in short supply in recent Anglo genre fiction) that it feels fresh, and never in a way that makes Yi Qiu seem like an unbearable Mary Sue — she's just an extremely well-meaning, occasionally sarcastic, generally kind and often hapless little alpaca girl. The changes that Yi Qiu brings about have positive effects not just on You Yan and the other main characters of the novel-within-the-novel, but also many of the minor characters. For instance, one of Luo Mingyuan's shixiong is depicted in the original novel as succumbing to You Yan's manipulations due to his burning jealousy of Luo Mingyuan. In the altered version of the novel, however, he treats Luo Mingyuan with grace and kindness, and even gets a heroic moment in his own right. Even nameless members of the Luxian Sect eventually set aside their prejudices against You Yan (and demons generally) and treat both her and Yi Qiu as friends and allies.
The clear message of the novel is: no one is beyond redemption as long as there's one person who cares enough about them to try. It demonstrates this not just through Yi Qiu and You Yan's relationship, but also through three other parallel romantic relationships: Luo Mingyuan and Jiang Yuyao, Jianli and Yuezhou (who are actually the mythological beasts Fuzhu and Huodou, the latter of whom Yi Qiu nicknames 'little hot dog'), and Goumang, the goddess of wood and spring and the bird demon Yusuo, the latter of whom inherits much of You Yan's plot function as antagonist. I suppose one could criticise the fact that Yusuo, despite being the new antagonist of the novel-within-the-novel, doesn't get enough screen time, and is basically silent during the climactic final confrontation with our heroes, but the rest of the story was strong and on-theme enough that I didn't mind overmuch.
In addition to romantic love, friendship is also given weight. Towards the end of the novel, You Yan and Yi Qiu sneak off to the demonic realm to try and resolve a tense situation between the divine and demonic forces, only to find Luo Mingyuan and Jiang Yuyao already there, waiting to lend a hand, because 'we knew you were going to try and do this alone, and we couldn't let that happen to our friends'. I found that genuinely moving. Also both entertaining and heartfelt are Yi Qiu's interactions with Jiang Yuyao, Luo Mingyuan and the rest of the Luxian Sect (there's a cute bit where she tries to cheer a very depressed Luo Mingyuan up by graciously allowing him to ruffle her fur, and another one where she teases Jiang Yuyao over the latter's budding relationship with Lu Mingyuan), and You Yan's constant (unconvincing) assertions that she cares nothing about them, often made just before she does something to help them.
I read the uncensored print edition of the novel by morefate, which also has a bonus post-ending extra chapter. The web version of the novel can be found here on JJWXC.
no subject
Date: 2024-09-15 01:29 am (UTC)Maybe what we all need is a kind, sentient alpaca XD
So, how did You Yan figure out about Yi Qiu? Did she know from the start?
no subject
Date: 2024-09-15 06:35 pm (UTC)So, how did You Yan figure out about Yi Qiu? Did she know from the start?
So fairly late in the novel Highlight for spoilers! *You Yan reveals that she knew something was up quite early on. She was in the habit of occasionally transfusing some spiritual energy into the alpaca (to help it cultivate to sentience), and once Yi Qiu took up residence in the alpaca's body, as it were, she continued doing that. During one transfusion, she read some of Yi Qiu's thoughts, and saw Yi Qiu mentally calling her 'the big bad'. She then assumed Yi Qiu was a particularly inept Heavenly agent sent to spy on her, but she decided to keep Yi Qiu around anyway, to see what Yi Qiu would do (and also because she's lonely and Yi Qiu is fun to tease). Yi Qiu explains everything to You Yan partway through the third volume, and You Yan mostly takes it in her stride, although she has murderous feelings towards 'the System' (whom she refers to as 'the Cistern') for being inside her girlfriend's body.*
no subject
Date: 2024-09-16 01:52 am (UTC)Highlight for spoilers!*"fun to tease" is a great reason for keeping her around XD. Hm, how did You Yan take the whole fictional reveal? I've been wondering if any novel has the characters go through existential crisis over learning that their fictional...*
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