A review by wordswritinstarlight
To Rule in a Turbulent World, Volume 1 by Fei Tian Ye Xiang, Gu Xue Rou

adventurous emotional lighthearted medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I had a great time with this book, honestly it immediately took a position as one of my favorite danmei I’ve read thus far. Having the main character and his love interest be so in sync from the beginning was really charming (especially since I just came off a book where that was aggressively not the case), and I had a good time watching You Miao branch out from his sheltered rich kid upbringing into the real world. I generally find spoiled rich kids exhausting in media as well as real life—I grew up too broke for that shit—but You Miao’s blithe good humor persists even after he starts facing actual consequences, which made it much easier to look at his earlier spoiled behavior as kind of endearingly naive rather than aggravatingly callous. And no notes on Li Zhifeng, honestly, he’s a fucking treasure. I’m not an expert on cultural subgroups in outer China and the immediate surrounding countries, but I really enjoyed the opportunity to see some of the history between the Han culture and, you know, basically everyone else.

This book ends in a lovely place of the boys being very functional and kind of at peace with their situation, so while I’m very excited for the next volume, the discovery that there will be SIX volumes makes me very nervous about how bad things are about to go for them. Currently I would recommend this for readers looking for society machinations and slice of life romance, with a light topping of adventure, or for readers who want a danmei that doesn’t take half a dozen volumes to get to the romance. I’d particularly recommend this for anyone who has watched Meet You at the Blossom, as You Miao is like a smarter, more competent version of the protagonist from that show.

Truly my only note on this book as a whole is that the art inside portrays both the boys as having very traditionally Han features, with very fair skin, which frustrated me a little since Li Zhifeng is repeatedly described as having darker skin and more Mongolian features, but I’m also aware this is the kind of design inconsistency I get hung up on a LOT, so, you know, take it with the relevant grain of salt. I’m just a finicky bitch about official character art matching the descriptions, it’s a character flaw.
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