A review by hiroto
黄金台 Golden Stage by 苍梧宾白

3.0

It was fun, and I would totally recommend it for people looking for a romance. Not a "chase you" romance, nor a "we're stuck in a perpetual stage of flirting" romance either, but a "i would D-WORD for you I L O V E you" romance. The mcs spend two chapters trying to make the reader believe they hate each other but it quickly fades out and instead it's a beautiful relationship between two slightly homocidal adults and they COMMUNICATE! would you look at that! They actually COMMUNICATE with each other!! This is the world LGBTQA+ want to see ✊

That being said I don't think I will read another danmei for now. The pace makes me want to ✂️ snap chapters. Because the stories tends to be long but still very linear, it's like reading multiples books with the same mc and following the same chronology one after the other, but some of these stories are bound to be less interesting than other. It's like you'd read Hercule Poirot books without stopping. Sure, there's a common thread tying all of these stories together, but when reading one singular book I want to go to the main story NOW! If that makes sense. It's probably due to the episodic style of publication, but then some plotlines are never picked out again?

For exemple
SpoilerIn the first few chapters, Fu Shen said he was escorting the Tatar Prince when he got embushed. Yan Xiaohan guessed that he actually made him take another route, and thus saved him. But it's never mentionned again? And Fu Shen neither confirms nor declines? THEN in the bonus chapters after the epilogue the Same Exact Trope is used with YXH escorting a Tatar princess and making her take another route? It's like the author poked fun at the reader "see? I didn't forget".

Of course it's probably also a case of the book being so long the reader forgets the plotholes or simply forgets they were ever resolved (like what I said just above.... maybe it was explained later and I brushed it over because I was engrossed in another "bit" of the story)