It’s Friday, so it’s time for the Book Blogger Hop again, hosted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer. I’ve made my own image from a stock photo (credit: Anna Shvets) to avoid adding images created via generative AI to my blog. Feel free to use it too if you would like!

This week’s prompt is about bigging up a book you love and think doesn’t get enough attention:

What book do you think deserves more love but flies under the radar?

This is really difficult! So I’m just going to go with a recent read that I actually had trouble finding other people talking about: Liu Gou Hua’s After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine. It’s a danmei novel in translation, in four volumes (three out so far), and despite the funny title, I think it’s one of the better danmei I’ve read recently.

If you haven’t read danmei before, or come across me talking about it, danmei are gay love stories which often mix in a variety of genres. Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s works are set in a variety of fantasy worlds and often features elements of horror (the buried head in Heaven Official’s Blessing comes to mind) and mystery (in both Heaven Official’s Blessing and Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, the protagonists spend a lot of time investigating things), while Priest’s Guardian is modern fantasy/mystery, others are more historical, etc.

After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine is mostly historical in tone, though there’s a fantasy element (one of the characters is a modern professor who transmigrates back into a period of history he’s studied). Once there, he quickly realises that he’s become a certain prince who was forced to marry a prisoner of war who later kills him and hangs his head off a wall, and the professor is very keen for that not to happen to him. He starts meddling in court politics and trying to help the prisoner of war heal and escape, trying to avert his fate — and, because it’s danmei, they end up falling in love. It’s an exquisite slow burn, and I can’t wait for volume four to be out in translation.

For those who are interested in danmei and know The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, there’s a bit of a Liushen vibe to Huo Wujiu and Jiang Suizhou.

But, since I know most people visiting my blog aren’t into danmei, I’ll offer another option as well — if you’re into Arthurian legends, Phyllis Ann Karr’s Idylls of the Queen is a very fun murder mystery and examination of the character of Sir Kay. I’ve been meaning to reread it for ages, since the last time I read it was when I was writing my dissertation chapter that featured it, (mumble) years ago now.