The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish

by Xue Shan Fei Hu

Genres: Fantasy, Light Novels, Romance
Pages: 436
Series: The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish #1
Rating:

Synopsis:

In this novel series originally released in Chinese–and coming to the English language for the first time–a man is transported into the historical world of a webnovel to win over a tyrant… as his pet fish!

When Li Yu falls asleep reading a webnovel about a ruthless, mute tyrant falling in love with a dainty male concubine, he doesn’t expect to wake up inside the world of the novel—especially not as a fish!

Li Yu soon finds himself adopted as Prince Jing's pet carp, tasked by a less-than-helpful Magic System with preventing the prince from becoming a cruel tyrant. If he can accomplish this mission, Li Yu will regain his human form. Yet how can he succeed from inside a fish bowl?!

The first volume of Xue Shan Fei Hu’s The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish is funny and cute. There are a few cringe moments (the “pearl”, I’ll say no more, ugh), and some very silly moments — but what else would you expect from a book with this premise?

Li Yu is precious, particularly with his growing commitment to and enjoyment of being a fish. I hope he never loses his ability to be a fish sometimes, even as he earns more human time, because he is so proud of earning his golden scales and being a handsome fish. I love him ending up slapping people with his fish tail to get things done, and other such ways of affecting the story.

I love Prince Jing too; he’s spoiled and not always very aware of other people, but he genuinely tries to make his fish happy, and to protect the people he cares about (few though those may be). Wang-gonggong’s devotion to him is great too; it’s clear he’s a person worth caring about, even if he can be arrogant and cold.

I know some of where this story is going, and I look forward to more palace intrigue, more ridiculous fish shenanigans, more of the fish-scamming system, and more romance.

As far as the art goes, it felt like there wasn’t that much of it, but flipping back there are a few pieces… they don’t stick in my mind very much, except for a couple with funny expressions and such. Mostly I think the style just doesn’t totally appeal.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)