Review: Ascending, Do Not Disturb

Overview

Warnings

There is a 300+ year age gap between Kong Hou and her love interest. Their romance is a first love for both of them that remains chaste until they're married, at which point Kong Hou is 100+ years old, but they do meet and start falling for each other when she is only 16.

Review

Strengths

• Kong Hou is a rare protagonist who is both kind and optimistic, while balancing it with being intelligent and practical.
• All the guest stars and supporting characters are very human with their own motivations.
• The world-building is very charming

Flaws

• For a novel that usually does very well in developing all the characters, the villains in comparison come across as a bit two-dimensional and uninteresting.

This is an extremely charming and funny slice-of-life xianxia adventure novel. Reading it always puts me in a great mood. Kong Hou is a fantastic protagonist, kind and optimistic without being a push-over. And the cultivation sect that she's in is a breath of fresh air as well, filled with people who want the best for each other, and with people who emphasize work-life balance who prefer relaxation and good food to mindlessly pursuing cultivation. This is an excellent change of pace from the usual xianxia novels where most sects are filled with competition and backstabbing. If you've read a lot of novels in the xianxia genre, you'll enjoy how this book lightly pokes fun at the common tropes & turns them on their heads.

Finally, there's a het romance without the obligatory screeching female rival villains. The supporting characters all have their own complex motivations and thoughts, with none of them flawless or irredeemably bad/unlikeable. Only the villains that the righteous sects fight against are the bad guys. Otherwise, there may be characters who get jealous, or characters who dislike the main character, but they're never portrayed as completely in-the-wrong, they sometimes change their minds, and their motivations are understandable.

I highly recommend this for a fluffy, low-stakes read.