Culinary Chronicles of the Court Flower: Volume 9

This should've been titled The Unraveling of Shu Kojin.

There's a lot of things that bothered me walking into this particular volume, so for the entire first half I actually considered rating this 3⭐ due to all these reasons. First of all, it's incredibly slow. Shohi had a moment where he reverts back to the horrendous person he was back in the first volume, and it proves to be fatal because it results in Kojin quitting his position. So now it falls upon Rimi to visit Kojin and convince him to come back. You seriously cannot convince me Shohi has truly grown as a character, especially not when he puts up the mature act only to go back to the exact same personality again at the very end. Nine volumes into the series, I still do not like Shohi and at this point I doubt I ever will. Rimi deserves better.

That being said, Shusei is definitely not a better option either. Despite what happened between them in the previous book, Shusei is back to treating Rimi terribly in this one. Even she admits that she's running out of love for him due to his actions, which he openly encourages. His reason for switching allegiance, one that involves Kojin, is petty at best and twisted at worst. Rimi really does her best to bring everyone together by drawing out Kojin's inner feelings, but even after he finally admits all the emotions he's kept hidden all this time, it barely changes anything when it comes to Shusei.

So... still not a fan of the romance.

The thing I can definitely say is good from this volume is how Kojin is being handled, and I bumped the rating up for him alone. This man is undoubtedly the most complex character in the series so far, and a good example of a grey character who does things for his own beliefs. I really liked how his conflicting feelings towards Seishu and Shusei are portrayed, as well as seeing him from his wife's perspective. It gives him depth as a character, precisely because he is flawed. The second half of the book highlights this sufficiently, sending the plot rolling fast along with all the politics going on.

Also, the issue I mentioned before remains. The book is still referring to characters as “the consort”, “the emperor”, “the teacher”, “the noblewoman”, and so on. Repeatedly. Sometimes multiple times in a single paragraph, and some of them in the middle of normal usage of “he” or “she”. It's so awkward and frankly quite annoying to read. Seriously, is this the original writing or the translation? Seeing that we're so close towards the end of the series though, sadly I doubt this would improve in the next two books.