The Taoist Emperor

Realistic Chinese fiction is hard to come by. I'm used to the high-flying wuxia fantastical stuff that movies are made on, and so reading this was a bit of a change of pace for me. I was not expecting it to be as dry and as....tedious, I guess is a good word, as this book was. I was sick this week and decided to just bite the bullet while couchbound and finish this one up, else I was likely to put it down. It's a very popular book and TV series in China, so I thought there had to be something here for me.

The author is great at worldbuilding, which is both a positive and a negative. He's meticulous at setting the stage for the Ming Dynasty, and I found myself learning a lot about the people, the culture, and the rituals I didn't know fully. Unfortunately, this leaves the book's wheels spinning for the first half. We get some detailed scenes, we get a lot of characters introduced and fleshed out, but not a real sense of who the main players of the book or why we're reading about them.

Speaking of the main character, it took forever for him to show up. Ha Rui finally shows up! Yes! The book can do something with this meticulous world it's got! Hahahahaha no, sorry, the book's over now. We get less than half of the book (more like a slim third, really) with the main character before it's all over. I felt pretty let down, honestly.

And the ending! What an ending it is! ...is what I'd say if it had one. It doesn't. The book feels almost like it ends mid-scene, honestly, with no indication of where the series is supposed to go after this. I don't know if this is a product of a serialized series packaged into a novel with a strange stopping point or what, but I definitely did not think the book ended on a high note, low note, or any note really.

So, great worldbuilding, but it's window dressing for a thin story and absent main character/cohesion that I need to really enjoy a book. The ending doesn't exist, the book just stops having pages. I will not be picking up the other books in this series.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advance review copy in exchange for an honest review.