So I don't know if you know the chinese TV series (same chinese title). I've watched it (and loved it) and I'm considering buying the novel but I first want to know what are the differences between the novel and the adaptation (I've heard that though, the tv series is a happy ending, it is a very unhappy one for the book). Buying a chinese book is expensive (and I'm still learning chinese so I can't read it yet online) so I have to be sure I'll like it. Please enlighten me !
Kind of late but, Colorful Bone is not the same IP as 一生一世美人骨 aka One Life, One Incarnation Beautiful Bones. I don't know which IP novel the drama is based on, but I did watch these series and I can say it isn't the same story. The Beautiful Bones one has been made into two different dramas due to Chinese Censorship not allowing stories on transmigration and reincarnation: One and Only is the story of the main couple's past, while Forever and Ever is their contemporary setting. The Female Lead appears to have "memories" of her past life, but it is all as she felt the movie she just dubbed (she is a dubbing actress) was something she was emotionally attatched to it. Colorful Bone, as the drama, it is a quite much more complicated story with some fantasy elements, such as the art of changing someone's face with some sort of "magical" surgery, entangled with the power-struggle of an Empire that has an underage Emperor.