When I was reading Amber sword because someone recommended it to me for romance, yeah I love that, and I also love the translator, the translator recommended grandmaster strategist. I just wanted to say that I read to chapter 15 and already so much happened. It's like the world online but it's not in a gaming setting with levels stats loot etc, but they both contain a lot of Chinese historical figures. Tgs reminds me a bit of @rdawv 's novel here on nuf where he includes poems in each chapter. Well tgs has poems too, but it also has a biography of the mc in many chapters. And only 15 chapters into the novel something very big happened like in against the gods but kinda more eventful than atg. I recommend the novel, if you can get through the style of the first 5 chapters and get used to it there will be an epic surprise around chapter 15. It is super well written.
never liked novel with scheming and weak protagonists let me recommend you a novel https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/15935/there-is-no-epic-loot-here-only-puns
Bear in mind that "Grandmaster Strategist" isn't actually a historical novel. It's one of those fake histories where the writer wants to borrow some ideas from history, but not actually rely on historical facts. The advantage to doing this is that it gives a lot more freedom to the writer, and the writer doesn't have to do as much research. The disadvantage is that you can't build a world that's more detailed than the real thing so proper historical novels can have higher highs.