The first 50-60 chapters are excellent. Real farming, a very realistic depiction of a modern person trying to adjust to his new life in a new world. Then it quite suddenly became seriously boring and when I looked at the ending and saw Kings (the Chinese emperor's sons) and Emperors there, affairs of the Court and the nation, my least favorite topics to read about in farming C-novels, I decisively dropped it. To me that is not a HE, it's the worst ending ever.... more>>

 Despite its tags, it is not yaoi, for there is no boy x boy love or gay s*x, it is a man x ger in a world where there are no women whatsoever, only males and gers. There is no romance or even feeling of love or doting or intimacy or enjoyment of each other's company, and it is not so much slice of life as descriptions of business of farming from scratch, step by step, with a lot of business networking woven in. <<less

Exceptionally well written and translated. For that I'll give five out of five stars. Too bad that I find two thirty five year old men in the bodies of 14 yr old boys (both shou and gong reborn) sitting in classrooms full of young teens, middleschoolers, and even being interested in them or making quck money off them, cringeworthy. It would be OK if they were real teens or real thirty five years old, but the pretense part is just so wrong on so many levels.... more>>

I really hoped for more, I thought this story was about something else and I  am not going to read a gazillion chapters about how one (the pampered one, the one guilty of neglect) is forced by another (the one guilty of spoiling his bf rotten) to change. It means that nothing has changed, not really. The MC is the force that shapes and bends and twists the ML's behavior and character in both lives. This kind of fated encounter and love is simply a punishment from above. I do not like the moral of that story at all if there is any. 

The tragedy tag is that nothing changes, they will get together again when their real age (the sum total of both life tracks) will be close to fifty.  <<less

It's excellent, lots of farming and cute kid and family life, but by ch 90 it got exceedingly boring and flat and no amount of... more>> intimacy, love or happiness between the MC and the ML could repair that flaw. And the kid behaved and talked and ate like a two year old regardless of his age throughout the entire novel which wears the reader out. At the age of five he still did not know how to dress himself??? Too much focus on the boy's gluttony or fatness is also no longer cute or funny. <<less

This story is weird (the narration does not flow all that well) and not that interesting, but it has its amazing and fascinating moments which suddenly happen here and there, frequenly enough to sort of keep me reading it. ... more>>

I have only read the first 18 chapters so far, until the moment when the MC meets the ML (the most unique first encounter ever, I swear), so I do not see any exaggerated patriotism or blatant nationalism in it so far. The main motivation in life that the MC has is to develop and manufacture novel drugs to save or improve people's lives.  Just people, humans, not necessarily Chinese. And for that purpose he escapes the mainland China to Hong Kong on a boat full of stowaways taking his academically gifted but unlucky in life half sister with him

P.S. The extreme opposition of Chinese culture and language to everything non-Chinese becomes obvious and uncomfortable to read about by ch 29. Everything Chinese is obviously unique and different but the author overcompensates for some inferiority complex of hers by portraying it as superior to any other culture (that of North American nations and ethnic groups or European nations, for example). I really prefer novels which lovingly (or realistically) portray China and everything Chinese without putting down (or elevating) the rest of the world nations and cultures.

P.P.S. The author really created some alternative reality in this novel. I thought it was about real history of China and Hong Kong as some reviewers indicated but it is not. She even characterizes the national character of Chinese people as "shy and modest"? What an oxymoron! Not even in that novel, not a single character depicted is shy or modest! And then she distorts the historical facts by saying that China with her 1/5of all population of Earth was not allowed to participate in the Human Genome project. In reality, China (Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing Genomics Institute/Human Genome Center) was a major player in that project. <<less

This is one of the most unusual C-novels I've read so far. It starts very boringly, insanely boring dialogues and infodumps, then it becomes interesting after the first 200chapters or so. But throughut the entire piece the author masterfully displays psychologies of dozens of human characters in motion so to speak.  ... more>>

The unique feature of this rags to riches, common country folk to imperial family, story is mostly that it is farming on extremely large scale right off the bat (and hooking up with the most noble and talented general in the entire nation off the bat). The FL uses  (and keeps secret) modern technologies of cotton farming and poultry farming, of cotton processing and oil pressing to become a millionaire ( in ancient China no less!) in one year.

The FL does quite a bit of charity but also cruel and evil deeds, at least as seenf rom the place I am at. She never forgives. The usual proud excuse for that that she gives is the same as in any other C-novels: that she is not a Christian.

Anyways, that is the author's design for what she considers admirable in a woman - a patient and vengeful survivor, very down to earth, zero idealism or even warmth towards kids, tons of pragmatism and focus on money management and healthy cash flow.

 I dropped it more than once for another reason. There is a distinct sense of lack of togetherness or family in the first third of the novel (where I am at now) and insane amounts of child labor, of kids under ages of 9 or 12. I lived on a farm when I was 9, helped grandma take care of our animals and poultry, and I  can't imagine taking care of two thousand chicks and two hundred ducks and their sh*t all alone, day and night, without even access to running water,  without days off!!!  And the existing families, notably those of her relatives and their relatives (and the ML's relatives too!), are fractured, separated or completely destroyed by the FL. She definitely is not a bringer of peace nor a laborer of love! I do not know how the writer achieved that feat, but she did. So it's a demoralizing novel, not wholesome, norvromantic, but if you like to see how human souls rot and stink in a variety of ways, you are welcome to read that book. Its translators did a good job!

I forced myself to read it up until ch 750 or so (well into book 2) where the FL got deeply pregnant with their first baby and it was all smooth sail for her in establishing more businesses. 

The only troubles that were neverending and required her mastery to deal with were hordes of idle and sexually frustrated to the point of derangement women aiming at riding her husband's d*ck - his deceased milk nurse's daughter, the sixth daughter of some noble relative of a princess, half a dozen of concubines gifted by the emperor, etc. And one troublesome Missus Sun, nee Su, who was deeply in love with one man enamored with the FL and married another man enamored  with the FL. WTF??? These things (and such people) are really boring to me, both day by day pregnancy descriptions and crazy and aggressive love (or sex) rivals, let alone a combination of them. 

Again, there are no boring topics on life, not really, just not very interesting ways of writing about them, as in this case. So I dropped it. For me the story ended there. I just read the spoilers on the novelupdates forum thread and that was enough. <<less

Well written and exquisitely translated with the length of the translator's notes overcoming that of the novel's text(!!!). ... more>>

I find the story both disgusting and boring though. I first thought that I simply did not look forward to reading about genius 1 year olds, or about two thirty something adults in 11 month old babies bodies, but that is not it. I have read superb sci-finovels about these things before and they were out of this world good. 

With this one I was not able to overcome aversion to the personality of the Chinese Robin Hood or an adult woman in a baby's body torturing another baby of the same age to make him speak.  A scene of a thirty something man (an orphan in his modern life) clinging to the OG's baby's teenage mom breast, because he now has a mother, well, both patents, is cringeworthy. 

With all those billions that he stole in modern time he never thought of spending a few bucks on a psychotherapist to deal with his pain of losing both parents in a mining accident and their compensation/"death benefits" being stolen by some bureaucrat(s). Then Destiny played another cruel joke on him by stealing his other beloved "parent", the kind director of his orphanage sacrificed his life to save the ML. So he made it his life mission to finance children's education and orphanages with the money stolen from bureaucrats and politicians in his first life and to make his parents safe and wealthy in his second life in medieval China.

I dropped it very early after I read the FL asking "Whose child have you seen that can flip their bodies over at this age (@1 y.o.)?" That shows that the writer has zero knowledge of actual babies who roll over as early as 4month old, and reading hundreds of chapters about imaginary pseudohuman babies growing up without time skip will be simply awful. <<less

It starts great and proceeds decently well, the FL is amazing...  on her own, if only she wasn't paired with the ML who is also a great guy... on his own, if only he was not not paired with the FL. They both deserve someone else. In short, by the end of their first case that ended with the unbelievably cruel castration (without anesthesia!!! which is a major operation on birds, not many survive such caponization) of an adult rooster, I've had enough of their mutual enmity and self-centeredness that fully displayed their less than attractive qualities. And I was not looking forward to more shocking cruelty to come.... more>>

This novel has some amazing legal cases and real-life situations and generous amounts of humor, and the translator is amazing, but the novel itself is not great. It is not slice of (private) life, nor romance but hundreds of pages of legal language and vast panorama of modern Chinese life in different communities. <<less

This is from fringecapybara's team of translators, so this novel is decent in terms of storytelling and well translated. Unfortunately, and I say it after reading 65chapters, it is empty of meaning or purpose. There has been no slice of life so far nor school life. There was not even drama. Just some minor face slapping as the daughter escapes her mother's side schemes against her and reunites with her biological father and changes her name and changes schools.... more>>

 I find it a bit annoying and exhausting that everyone is a beautiful and unsurpassable genius. Everything is so exaggerated, piling up abnormal quantities of OPness which is simply unpleasant to the eye. The dad is both a technology university prof and the head of a huge corp, and a marine/soldier, and a resolute bachelor who apparently never had s*x, except that time 15 years ago when a woman on aphrodisiac drugs had s*x with him while he was unconscious, and does not plan to have any even at his 37 yrs of age. And the FL is in junior high, 14 yrs old and so far did nothing remarkable, just some survival and assault and torture skills and a strong desire to make a buck by participating in different competitions for students. Not my cup of tea. <<less