Daughter of the Moon Goddess

This is a retelling of the Mid-Autumn Legend, the tale of Chang'e and Houyi.

At first glance, this book seems like everything I would love. The writing is beautiful and lyrical. The world is impeccably lush, it feels somewhat nostalgic to a Chinese person like me, the culture showing through every little thing mentioned subtly. The sceneries, places, clothing, accessories, and food are vividly described, providing very pleasant imageries to the mind. Most importantly, the cover is stunning and the reason why I picked this up to begin with.

Little did I know it'd be the only reason to go on.

The plot starts off with a bang. Right from the first chapter, Xingyin is forced to leave the tranquility of her home and lands in the middle of enemy territory… and that's where it lags endlessly. There isn't a clear direction beyond that point on how Xingyin would find her way home, except a very vague "I need to get better so I can return". What happens instead is Xingyin spends years becoming Prince Liwei's study partner, joins the army because she gets her heart broken, and it's only at the last 30% that she returns to the path of saving her mother.

If that was the only problem, it would've been so much easier to like this book. Sadly, it has a lot of other issues that makes it impossible. First off, Xingyin is a complete Mary Sue. Extremely prideful, brash, and arrogant with a single braincell about to flicker out. Most of the time her arrogance is baseless because she's just running her mouth without the skills to back it up, but she's such a Mary Sue she ends up impressing everyone anyway. Her personal growth is always either skipped or nonexistent. She's just so good at everything, impressing everyone and accomplishing impossible feats easily. She can fight completely fine even when gravely injured or poisoned. Gives off massive unlike-other-girls special snowflake vibes.

Next, the girl-on-girl hate is pretty strong. A lot of female characters hate Xingyin on sight, and she's not exactly nice to them either. Can we leave this kind of thing back in the 2010s PLEASE. It doesn't make the main character look any better.

The romance is terrible. There are time skips that leaves out crucial relationship development, both for Liwei and Wenzhi. Years pass by just like that, and they instantly jump from being good friends to love declarations. No build-up, no chemistry, nothing. It's a lot of telling instead of showing. Despite the beautiful writing, it really feels like beauty with barely any substance. It remains flat throughout and delivers no emotion during crucial scenes and even during the climax.

Memories of our time together flashed before my mind: our years of friendship, our few stolen days of love.

WHERE? You mean the years that got conveniently skipped?

After the Eastern Sea, Wenzhi and I went from one campaign to the next, at times not returning to the Celestial Kingdom for months at a stretch. We fought terrifying monsters, ravenous beasts, and—most recently—the fearsome spirits that plagued the eastern border, close to the forests of the Phoenix Kingdom.

Great. Even more time skip and telling instead of showing.

Xingyin is later tasked to retrieve pearls from the legendary Four Dragons, and being a Mary Sue, she accomplishes this seemingly daunting task in the span of ONE chapter. Two if you count the journey and not the actual battle. Maybe if the book gave more space for the battles instead of the romance and endless descriptions of clothes, this would've been a more engaging read.

Alas, not even delicious romantic angst and endless pining could save this story for me. At first I considered torturing myself further by reading the sequel for the pretty cover, but by the time I reached the end of this book, the willpower and masochism to do so had left me completely. Should just spend the time on better books.

I really wanted to love this so I'm sad. 😭😭😭