The Shadow of the Empire

More of a 3.5 but I'm rounding up.

These days, I'm always excited to pick up any book which has historical cdrama vibes, so I was immediately interested when I encountered this book. Also, Dee Renjie/ Judge Dee/ Detective Dee is a historical figure I remember reading a bit about and also know that he is quite a popular character in fiction. So I too wanted to see what kind of character he is and how he solves cases.

I love how the author manages to balance the mystery of the murder with the larger political implications and imperial power struggles. And it's always interesting to read a book where you know who the possible murderer is but need to figure out the motivations and accomplices. The way Judge Dee and his assistant Yang Rong go about investigating is nothing too unique or unpredictable but how they connect all the threads was cool.

But I think the best part was the writing. It is a historical book set in Tang dynasty but the author's writing style is very modern, so it's easily accessible while still giving the olden times vibes. The audiobook was also mostly good except I thought maybe the pronunciation of the names were a bit westernized. And having found a new fascination for Empress Wu Zetian since last year, I found it very interesting to learn a bit about how the officials and scholars and common people saw her reign as against Confucian principles, even if she was pretty competent. Albeit it is a fictionalized account of her rule, nevertheless it's a short glimpse which I enjoyed and would love to read more books about her.

And as one of the main characters is Xuanji, a poetess, I loved how the author incorporated her poems throughout, the meaning in their words giving clues as to her mindset and motivations. I know ancient Chinese poems can't translate well into English because of the limitations of the language, but I still liked how they were interwoven into the story. And the appendix with the poems and some historical context for them was absolutely amazing. Maybe it'll be fun to find the original poems and read them even if I can't understand Mandarin.

Overall, this was a fun mystery with some cool characters, lots of reflection on political and spiritual matters and an interesting look at the imperial dynasty of the time. I can see that the rest of this series is set in modern times and this was the only spin-off, so I don't know if I'll check them out. But I'm definitely more interested in books like this one. Hopefully I'll discover similar ones in the future.