Heart, Serpent, Dirt

I finished Mo Du/Silent Reading by priest a little while ago, I started it around January as part of my exploratory priest binge post-finishing Sha Po Lang and found myself so hooked, I inhaled 90% of it in like a week. See--before I was anything else, I was first and foremost an incorrigible murder fan. Like, the true crime podcast, serial killer research and murder mystery novel consumer kind. Crime fascinates me. (I'd blame my early exposure to my mother's crime novel collection, but I'm not here today to psychoanalyse myself.)

So: priest. After finishing Sha Po Lang (which is excellent, I can 100% recommend it if you're even a little bit into wuxia/xianxia and steampunk respectively), I desperately wanted to know what else this author had done, where her popularity comes from and what else is in her massive, massive brain. (Speaking purely from 1) personal preference--her characters are so deeply my thing, it's delightful--and 2) possibly, perhaps, some thirst. ((There were these pictures floating around on the cursed bird website a while ago which may or may not have been taken of priest's arm post-gym, and I am only human.)).) Mo Du yoinked me in not only because, well, priest, but also because the summary promised everything from my first love: crime! Murder! Explorations of the Human Psyche (tm)! 

That was the expectation.

What I got in the end--in addition to all of the above, thank you jiejie--were, in order, 1) my favourite danmei relationship to date (what am I going more feral over? Fei Du and his big mouth? Luo Wenzhou's house and the layers of home-ness it represents? Guh) and 2) the best fictional cat in existence one can ask for. (Luo Yiguo, darling boy, this one is for you.)

Bonus: the translation is really good. Like really good. I'm not a native Chinese speaker--duolingo is not fast enough to keep up with the volume of content I consume--and I'm in a constant battle with finding truly great novel recs and not being able to read them. English fan translations also don't always make for a pleasant reader experience. (No shade for free content and labour! I still read them--some of them do stand out as especially good though.)

 

In summary: read mo du, and when you're FINISHED reading mo du, come and talk to me about it please.

(Tiny sidenote: my stupid researcher brain that never shuts up finds the like... mechanics of fan translations and translation timelines in relation to film or animation adaptation releases, and fan translations in relation to other fan translations is fascinating!! I have a spreadsheet. I think about this a lot.)