Review

Strengths

• A protagonist with emotional maturity and depth.
• Brutal scheming and politicking
• Incredibly adorable (yet deadly) love interest

Flaws

A brilliant story following Jing Beiyuan's emotional journey moving on from a tragic love that spanned seven lifetimes, and carving out a new life for himself. One of the things I love about priest's characters is their emotional depth and maturity, and it especially stands out in this story, as Jing Beiyuan is someone who has reincarnated and retained his memory over several hundred years & seven lifetimes. You can really feel the weight of his years through every word.

The backdrop to his emotional journey is a ruthless fight for the throne involving three princes. It does a really amazing job of portraying how even the most well-intentioned parties get corrupted by the viciousness of the power struggle just to survive. I thought what Mei Changsu did to Jingrui in Nirvana in Fire was the biggest asshole move I've seen anyone pull in a while... Then I read Qi Ye.

I loved the development of his new romance too. It was rocky and not an easy, smooth journey, but it felt very realistic.

I recommend this book to people looking for characters with emotional depth, who don't mind if the protagonists are Machiavellian to the extreme, and who don't mind a rather melancholy story with an ultimately happy ending.