Heaven Official's Blessing

by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Romance
Pages: 403
Series: Heaven Official's Blessing / Tian Guan Ci Fu #6
Rating:

Synopsis:

BODY IN ABYSS, HEART IN PARADISE

White No-Face, Xie Lian’s greatest fear and most hated enemy, has arrived…or so it seems. While the ghost with the half-crying, half-smiling mask is somewhere nearby, the creature is elusive as always, taunting Xie Lian from just out of reach and promising the total destruction of everything he holds dear.

As Xie Lian confronts the trauma of his last encounter with the terrifying ghost, Hua Cheng will do anything in his power to protect him. But White No-Face’s identity and purpose are not the only mysteries to unravel, as Hua Cheng also has a history in the labyrinthine tunnels beneath Mount Tonglu. Will Xie Lian finally discover the full connection they share—and learn the true depths of Hua Cheng’s devotion?

The sixth volume of MXTX’s Heaven Official’s Blessing is certainly full of ups and downs. The first section, in the “present” of the narrative, answers a few mysteries and gives us a moment we’ve been waiting for since the first book: Xie Lian acknowledges Hua Cheng’s feelings for him, and indicates that he returns them. It’s a lovely, lovely scene…

And then we slip off into a flashback even darker and sadder than the first. It’s better-paced, in my opinion, but it’s an extremely rough read, as Xie Lian is manipulated and cast down by his people. He loses his way severely, and it doesn’t really help to know that he ends up being true to himself again — you still have to read about him going through it.

Reading it with an eye for metaphor, and remembering how important Xie Lian’s virginity is as a theme, it’s hard to avoid drawing parallels with the incidents on Beizi Hill in the first flashback, and reading the mass-stabbing as a literal and metaphorical violation, so it’s all a bit dark.

There’s important stuff in this volume, but the flashback is a really rough read. It’s hard to decide quite how to rate it — but the scene from the cover is so good it has to be a 4/5, even with all the misery of the flashback.

Rating: 4/5