bookheaven | Dinghai Fusheng Records Vol. 1

Dinghai Fusheng Records Vol. 1 by Fei Tian Ye Xiang

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So many of my friends have gotten into danmei and the books sitting there on the shelves being all chunky and pretty that I reluctantly bought one. I say reluctantly because as much as I love LGBT stories I find Japanese Boys Love subgenre to be not to my tastes and I feared the Chinese version would be the same. I was unfortunately right. I prefer my LGBT stories to feel more authentic and respectful and not some female gaze driven fantasy. This is a hundred percent the latter.

Don't get me wrong, the art is beautiful and the story isn't bad. It's just not to my tastes in LGBT literature. It has an interesting premise. Chen Xing a 16 year old boy is one of the last exorcists in the land and he knows he's predestined to die at age 20 (thanks for nothing, fates) His task is to find his preordained protector which might just be Xiang Shu, currently incarcerated for crimes he might not have committed (and I wish both men were as exciting as the blurb made them sound. Hint: they're not. Shu being engimatic means he hardly has a speaking role and he's an absolute Alphahole).

Chen is following the only magic he has a heart lamp which glows and....that's it. In theory it glows when his protector is near and some of the demons fear the light. And that's the whole plot. If Chen and Xiang don't do their thing (whatever that is, it's not clear) demons will reenter the world and Chen obviously doesn't want this. He finds Xiang and frees him but since this historical period of China is all about the warring warlords Xiang easily runs off and we spend the entire book trying to catch back up to him.

Chen would have been lost except for Feng Qianjun a supposed assassin pretty boy who helps Chen find Xiang for....reasons I guess. He also just disappears at one point so subtly I had to go back looking to see what happened.

The whole thing is mostly Chen throwing info dumps like they're confetti. It has a good idea but it's bogged down in repetition and Xiang being a black hole of a character. And as pretty as the art is all the important characters have very similar pretty boy looks making it hard to tell them apart and the soldier grunts are just as interchangeable.

I don't think this will be a bad series but I know it's not for me and at the cost of the paperbacks (I prefer paper for sequential art stories) I don't think I'll be continuing.

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