Recommendations Politics!! Scheming!! Let's put the MC's brain into a good use!

I find that people seem to overhype "Malicious Empress" by quite a bit. I read the book a while ago and I'd say that the beginning is quite good. The protagonist is forced to rely on her own wits to survive but this stops happening by the one-third mark of the story, and the last third devolves into a very different (and much inferior) animal.

Be warned that this book is pretty high on the self-serving side. But what really turned me off was that the writer decided that instead of coming up with names for his characters he'd just use the names of soccer stars.

I wish I could offer recommendations, but most of the books I've come across that tell this kind of story tend to be so self-serving that there's very little tension. The best ones I've read tend to be historical novels, but historical novels don't get translated. I've got plenty of suggestions if you can read Chinese though - you'd probably love something like 回到明朝当王爷.

Oh, and I normally think of Tong Hua novels more as Romances than as political stories, but the political stuff in them is pretty decent. Bu Bu Jing Xin would be pretty good for this as the protagonist is from the future so she (supposedly) knows exactly what's going to happen. But because she's not in the history books she doesn't know what her own outcome would be.

 

I'd you should. The story still moves at the same pace as before, and every chapter brings something new to the table. Recently there had even been an epic fight, but I'll let you read it yourself. The only problem with this novel is its translation speed.

 

Thanks for the insight! Ahhh, it's such a shame that historical novels rarely being translated. China's ancient court intrigue is one of the best treat
Ooh, I've been holding myself from reading Bu Bu Jing Xin because the translation rate, but i seems to read from somewhere that they have a drama series? have you watched it yet? In your opinion, which is better : the drama or novel?

Alrighty! Thanks for the reccomendation. Time to finally know which girl that he'll ended up with!

 

At it's best, Chinese political intrigue can be amazing. I've read tons of English language novels before but they don't really hold a candle in comparison. It's always amusing seeing people talk up all the politics in something like "a Song of Ice and Fire" when there's so much better out there. Yue Guan is one of the best at this, but sadly only one shortlived attempt to translate his books has ever been made.

The TV show is amazing. It's probably the closest book to TV adaptation I've ever come across and it might be the best Mainland Chinese TV show I've ever watched. There's a reason why the TV show is considered a modern classic. It's so close that I always say that watching the show is a good replacement for reading the book. The music and the acting do a great job of adding gravity to the story so it's one of the rare cases where I'd prefer it to the book. There is a subtitled version of the show on Youtube, but it might be missing some audio so something like viki might be a better choice.

 

hooray, i'll totally add it to my watchlist now! I've always had issues with a novel-adaptation movie before, because usually it pales in comparison with the book. I'll trust you on this one

Thank youu

 

also had korean series adaption titled Moon Lover: Scarlet Heart Ryeo
i dunno how it compare to the mainland China series in term of quality though cus i never watch it

 

No problem. You know, there are a ton of Chinese shows that I'd recommend that people watch, but this is the only one where I'd say that the show can completely replace the book.

Just don't watch the preview or any of the music videos, they're chock full of spoilers.

I've never watched the Korean show either, but I've heard that it feels completely different from Bu Bu Jing Xin. The former is a lot more like the standard idol romance and it doesn't have the same weight and substance of the latter. The budget is also a big difference as Bu Bu Jing Xin has amazing costumes and set, and the Korean one does not. The music in the Chinese version is a lot better as well.

I've seen a bunch of videos comparing the two (mostly by Korean commentators) and they seem to heavily prefer the Chinese version.

 

Court politics where the MC fails epically? I bring you Imperial Uncle. Latter parts of it have less court intrigue, but the former bits are really good and twisty, helped along by the fact that our MC is a very, very unreliable narrator.

 

Sadly, scarlet heart ryo is a romance and not quite the political backstabbing intrigue that i'm looking for. But thanks for the reccommendation

Oooh, the summary looks very interesting! I'm definitely adding it to my reading list. Thank you

 

I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head with your own list. I merely have one more to add to that, https://www.novelupdates.com/series/holy-roman-empire/

 

lol that summary about the name cracked me up . It looks interesting, though! Thanks for recommending it

 

try dungeon defence

 

Yes, i've finished reading it and it is quite good! still, thanks for the reccommemdation

 

Do you have a link to the sub?

 

https://www.viki.com/tv/2978c-scarlet-heart?locale=en
I don't use Viki so I didn't know that it was paywalled. If it helps, the show is on Youtube as well but it may have some audio problems.

 

https://www.novelupdates.com/series/a-step-into-the-past/
Politics, scheming, romance, action, tragedy.
One of the classics and most of the tropes you see today are inspired by this and his other works.

 

Thank you!
I've read it, but truthfully, can't stomatch the.... less than stellar characterization that i've read in its first 80 chapters. Sorry, but so far, the characters seems to be pretty....formulatic (fight-get the girl-f*ck-deliberately attract troubles-repeat), to the point that i think the reviewers are lying to me about the novel being as brilliant with super cunning-at-politic MC as they said..
Do you think that it'll get better at the latter chapters?

 

City of Sin main dish is exactly personal armies, schemings, betrayals, politics and family lineages.

MC plot armor is a bless of wisdom from a goddess.

First 1/4 of the serie is learning, 2/4 is developing as a faction power, 3/4 is becoming overpowered (without dropping the management of his armies or disregard political schemes), and the 4/4 i don’t know cos i did’t finished it.
It’s 9 books with an amount of chapters in each, i read 1 to 7 only of the 9 books. The serie is also finished and full translated.

 

The book isn't that great. It's famous and influential, but it only has a couple of decent couple of decent characters and the whole thing is about 50% too long. Huang Yi's other book (Da Tang Shuang Long Zhuan) is even more famous and popular but I think that it's even weaker. I think that it gets a lot of props because there aren't a whole lot of books like it on NU so it gets a lot of undue praise. Hell, it gets put in the Tragedy and Romance genres when it's nothing like that. Another book that benefits from this phenomenon is "The Grandmaster Strategist".

If you're interested in the story, just watch the TVB TV show. They make a lot of changes and the characters and the story is better for it. Don't watch the Mainland show that came out recently (last year?). I've never seen it, but I hear that it's dreadful.

 

The MC's way to solve scheming is to bring a bigger army which is a sleeper if I say so myself