Is Heaven Official's Blessing worth reading?

Is Heaven Official's Blessing worth reading? Ask around and the answer comes fast and warm, then trails off into a "but." Readers of Heaven Official's Blessing (天官赐福) talk about it the way people talk about a long trip: best days first, airport last.

What Heaven Official's Blessing is

A danmei xianxia about a god nobody wants. Xie Lian was once the crown prince of the kingdom of Xianle and a heavenly official adored by a whole country. He's been thrown out of heaven twice, and the book opens on his third ascension, eight hundred years later, with no followers, no money, and a reputation as the court's joke. The other gods send him down to handle small jobs, and he settles into a leaky shrine at Puqi Village, where a young man in red with a silver butterfly keeps turning up wherever trouble is. That's Hua Cheng, a ghost king the heavens are frightened of. The early chapters run as cases, a ghost bridegroom on a mountain, a city of ghosts, each one pulling a little more of Xie Lian's past into the light.

What readers love

Xie Lian, a gentle, broke, faintly ridiculous lead who has already lost everything and still helps people, without turning into a doormat. The romance, which readers keep calling the most patient in danmei; Hua Cheng has waited centuries, and the book lets you feel the waiting instead of announcing it. And the side cast, above all the Wind Master Shi Qingxuan, whose arc is the one people bring up when they say the book made them cry on a bus.

Is Heaven Official's Blessing worth reading for you?

The split is about the flashbacks. Two of the eight volumes leave the present to tell Xie Lian's past, and the second of those is long and grim. Some readers call it the heart of the book; others stalled there for months. The early cases read to some like separate stories before the real one arrives, and a few readers never forgive young Xie Lian his stubbornness, even once the book explains it.

The readers who bounce mostly came from the animated adaptation expecting its pace, as far as we can tell. The novel is slower and odder, and the digressions are where the feeling lives. If you loved the same author's earlier books for their plot engines, this one asks for more patience and repays it in the last two volumes. If you want a couple to root for from chapter one, it's the easy yes.

Based on reader reviews; we'll write our own once we've finished it.

If you enjoy it, support the author where it's published: JJWXC. Licensed English edition: Seven Seas.