Qian Qiu
Thousand Autumns: Qian Qiu

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Thousand Autumns is a Chinese historical wuxian (martial arts) novel. I think this is important to note as many who read danmei will have certain expectations (mostly created by MDZS & TGCF... I know I did).

My knowledge of martial arts is minimal, my knowledge of Chinese history worse. The majority of this novel revolves around politics and the various religious sects, and their power struggles. I find it challenging to review the world building as I do not know fact from fiction. In spite of my ignorance I was able to follow the gist of the story and mostly treated it like an open-world ... RPG with 'hack-n-slash' playthrough.

What truly made the book enjoyable though, was the relationship between Shen Qiao and Yan Wushi. They can be accurately described as complete opposites. SQ is kind, gentle-natured and humble, YW is inconsiderate, brutal and arrogant. Morally SQ is lawful good. YW has been described as evil, but I found him more chaotic neutral... he does whatever the hell he wants and its funny af! Their character growth and relationship dynamic is full of twists and turns, but be aware this is a slow burn and only matures in the final volume. One has to read the extras in order to find closure.

As the reader is no doubt aware, Chinese censorship laws are brutal, resulting in authors using metaphors and euphemism to describe anything that could get them into trouble. Personally I enjoy this as it gives solemnity to intimate, private moments.

A note on translation:
I read the official translation of volumes 1-3, but as the official of 4 has not yet been published I completed the novel using fan translations. In hindsight I wish that I'd only read the fan translations. Even with their typos I enjoyed the extra notes explaining Chinese word play and puns that YW used. (He truly does resort to dad jokes! 😂). The novel is full of poetic language and metaphors, the official translation felt a little dry without them. I also realise that this is personal preference as many felt the Seven Seas official translation was better.

I don't think this will be everyone's cup of tea, the story can be a bit clunky at times. My braincells were strained by the politics heavy theme and trying to remember who was who. Chinese names are a challenge in themselves. Yan Wushi is an entertaining bastard though and for me, at least, it was worth the binge-read.

I found this a sophisticated read, 8/10 for occasionally making me feel uneducated cretin.

[Disclaimer] It's been a few months since I finished the novel so what plot details I think were irrelevant may be slightly off, this shouldn't affect the review too much though. This is also a rant as much as it is a review sorry lol.

Thousand Autumns is a BL/danmei novel with a fairly interesting premise and a pairing with a (in my opinion) really compelling dynamic. The cynical, selfish and naturally evil Yan Wushi, and the righteous and naturally good Shen Qiao.

The first half of the novel is great. There are some really entertaining interactions between YWS and SQ, and we are given a good ... and intriguing look into the politics of the setting, and I can honestly say that up until the point where YWS was almost killed in the ambush that I enjoyed the novel and what it had to offer.

So what went wrong?

Starting with directly after the assassination attempt where YWS's soul splits causing him to develop a split personality disorder, I found this arc to be completely pointless after it ended. From what I can tell it was an attempt by the writer to both bring make SQ feel some trust, or at least some feelings of fondness, towards YWS again, especially through Ah-Yan and Xie Ling, and also to give the reader some context about his past (albeit not much).

We were shown all of these other sides of YWS that made him appear as not as one-sidedly evil as he was initially presented however when his soul pieced itself back together he immediately went back to his old ways, with none of the other parts of his soul really showing through ever again, which essentially renders the whole arc pointless, which is extra annoying as it is so irritating to read (or at least it was for me).

In this second half of the story, the political subplot also continues to develop. However the constant political discussions of what's happening outside of the main couple end up taking up such a huge amount of space that you end up just completely skimming over it when the conversation turns in that direction. And considering that by the end of the story it has made almost zero difference to the outcome, it begs the question of why was it even there in the first place. And don't even get me started on Chen Gong and whatever his deal was.

The novel as a whole wasn't written very well, and it didn't appear that well thought through. Usually my standards are fairly low and a few things here and there that are annoying to read are okay with me but one thing that was really hard to read was the fight scenes. It was so strange seeing how many words were being used to describe absolutely nothing. Maybe I'm being harsh but never have I read a novel where any fight scene has made me think "wow this author is not good at writing fight scenes", letalone a novel that makes me think that for EVERY fight scene. And what's worse was that they weren't even boring to read so my annoyance feels so baseless.

The last MAJOR problem I'm going to bring up is how the main story ended before the characters even officially got together. Now I am aware that Thousand Autumns is one of those novels where the romance is almost secondary, or at least as important as the political side of the story but COME ON. To even see them properly confess to each other (if you could even call that a confession). The romance was underdeveloped (at least on SQs side) to a point where it felt too forced for me to fully rationalise it in my head. In fact though SQ as a whole felt like a character who has no personality beyond being "good", and even though he does show an ounce of individuality when interacting with YWS, he never seems to develop as a person at any point in the novel and he ends up coming across as stale by the end.

In conclusion Thousand Autumns started off as a political danmei with huge potential but instead failed due to a combination of bad writing, and bad execution. I did honestly enjoy the first half and even though the ending was annoying the novel as a whole wasn't TOO terrible, hence the 6/10