{"id":28655,"date":"2025-01-10T20:37:22","date_gmt":"2025-01-11T02:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/?p=28655"},"modified":"2025-03-18T21:27:53","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T02:27:53","slug":"heaven-officials-blessing-345-mo-xiang-tong-xiu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/heaven-officials-blessing-345-mo-xiang-tong-xiu\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review(ish): Heaven Official\u2019s Blessing (#3-8), by M\u00f2 Xi\u0101ng T\u00f3ng Xi\u00f9"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I started this series a couple of years ago when the books first started coming out in English. I purchased the first couple (and read them) and then had to wait and buy them as they became available, which I did for a while. But I never quite got around to coming back and finishing the series. Here is my review-ish write-up of the first two books:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"tZ3Rh0VrJf\"><p><a href=\"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/heaven-officials-blessing-mo-xiang-tong-xiu\/\">Book Review(ish): Heaven Official&#8217;s Blessing, by M\u00f2 Xi\u0101ng T\u00f3ng Xi\u00f9<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; visibility: hidden;\" title=\"&#8220;Book Review(ish): Heaven Official&#8217;s Blessing, by M\u00f2 Xi\u0101ng T\u00f3ng Xi\u00f9&#8221; &#8212; See Sadie Read\" src=\"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/heaven-officials-blessing-mo-xiang-tong-xiu\/embed\/#?secret=hskj7Dnrm7#?secret=tZ3Rh0VrJf\" data-secret=\"tZ3Rh0VrJf\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I needed an X-authored book for my 2024 author challenge, where I read a book by an author with a surname for every letter of the alphabet. So, I picked the series back up, even though I only have up to book 5. I read book three as one of my last books of 2024, and read book four as my first book of 2025, then went ahead and kept on to read book five. Not gonna be scrambling to find an X-authored book this December for my author alphabet challenge. Ha!<\/p>\n<p>Here are the covers, which are just too pretty for words.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28656 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Heaven-Officials-Blessing-345-1024x491.png\" alt=\"Heaven Official\u2019s Blessing 3,4,5\" width=\"598\" height=\"287\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Heaven-Officials-Blessing-345-1024x491.png 1024w, http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Heaven-Officials-Blessing-345-300x144.png 300w, http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Heaven-Officials-Blessing-345-768x368.png 768w, http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Heaven-Officials-Blessing-345-1536x737.png 1536w, http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Heaven-Officials-Blessing-345-624x299.png 624w, http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Heaven-Officials-Blessing-345.png 1672w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 598px) 100vw, 598px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Honestly, I don&#8217;t have a lot to say regarding a review. Once you get far enough into a series, it all starts to blur together, and there is little sense of liking this book or that one. I&#8217;m enjoying the series. It&#8217;s silly and light-hearted (for the most part), with a crowd of charismatic characters. The writing is not that of your standard novel, and there are times when it grates on me. But mostly, in the same way you watch a silly anime or movie, I&#8217;m enjoying the journey of this series, even if any individual aspect of it would sound ridiculous on the recounting. I don&#8217;t yet own the rest of the series. <del>But I plan to finish it off at some point.<\/del><\/p>\n<p>Update: I&#8217;ve finished the series now. But I&#8217;ve opted to tag the remaining books here rather than give it another post.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-28817 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/heaven-official-s-blessing-6-8-1024x479.png\" alt=\"heaven official s blessing 6-8\" width=\"625\" height=\"292\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I thought this series wrapped up well. Book six felt like it dragged a bit. In book seven, you finally get the satisfaction of <span data-reactid=\".kc2xzeuaiy.$7955c53f607b75ecf0fb7b8498c3999f377066ac.1.0.2.0.0.0\">Xie Lian<\/span> putting together some of the obvious clues about <span data-reactid=\".kc2xzeuaiy.$7955c53f607b75ecf0fb7b8498c3999f377066ac.1.0.2.0.0.0\">Hua Cheng<\/span>, their past, and <span data-reactid=\".kc2xzeuaiy.$7955c53f607b75ecf0fb7b8498c3999f377066ac.1.0.2.0.0.0\">Hua Cheng<\/span>&#8216;s current intentions. And in book eight, you get the happily ever after, which is nice. However, that only takes about 1\/3 of the book. The rest are short stories (or one-shots), and I was a tad bored by them. All in all, though, I&#8217;m glad to have read the series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I started this series a couple of years ago when the books first started coming out in English. I purchased the first couple (and read them) and then had to wait and buy them as they became available, which I did for a while. But I never quite got around to coming back and finishing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":28656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2473,329,2474,2472,61,466,90,2471,2475],"class_list":["post-28655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-booksbook-review","tag-boys-love","tag-china","tag-chinese","tag-danmei","tag-fantasy","tag-lgbtq","tag-mm","tag-mo-xiang-tong-xiu","tag-seven-seas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28655"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28819,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28655\/revisions\/28819"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}