Currently read till chapter 578, continuing This book is about our MC Lu Chen, who got reincarnated into the body of a child prince and grows up into a wastrel to avoid being pulled into the mess of inheriting the throne and having to fight with his brothers. The story actually starts years later, when he is to be "exiled"/appointed to the barren North County as a seignor. Before that he has to marry a girl which then leads to the system being activated on his wedding night. After reaching North County he then proceeds to develop his domain which leads to increasingly deeper political schemes and struggles and him increasing his harem. Tags are kingdom building, fight for the throne, politics, system, wuxia, modern technology, romanceThe main focus besides the harem/romance is the kingdom building and political landscape. With continuing development the political nature of the novel continues to get deeper as well with spying and anti-spy-measures as well as turncoats. So far it's well done and enjoyable. I also have to honorably mention, that this novel, despite it being harem, leaves out the adult interaction. I can appreciate both, yet it is rare and enjoyable, to have a novel work perfectly well without it. The main focus still remains on the political and kingdom building aspect. Minus points tho for some of the descriptions that remained here. Even if I can discern by context that there was no actual r*pe involved, having someone struggle to avoid being kissed before submitting (just to give an example) isn't really enjoyable. As this is happening with a more medieval mindset of this world, it's not unfitting of the novel in general but remains questionable in my opinion. (I still continue reading it.) First of all, disclaimer: This book is the translation of a Chinese novel. Like in almost all of them, we have the same occurring problems/mistakes; sometimes pronouns are mixed up and numbers may deviate by one digit every now and then (e. g. 10,000 being 100,000 all of a sudden ans vice versa). Although this is rarely this case in this novel, some people find this to be a huge problem, so I thought I should mention it. There's only one exception to this. The term master/grandmaster is constantly being mixed up, with even having a great-grandmaster once, which isn't a thing in this novel. This lead to some confusion at first till I figured out that grandmasters were quite precious and are mentioned with the notion of being rare etc. Besides the things mentioned above, the writing quality itself is good. Now let's proceed to the good stuff. To the character design: All characters have a reasonable dept to them. Lu Chen, the MC, isn't dumb but also not overly smart. He relies on the system and uses it well to his advantage. As things get more complicated politically, he relies on his wise and experienced adviser and actually listens to the things he points out. He's continuously acting cautious, which I really appreciate. He has modern values (except monogamy) thus making a decent ruler, bringing improvements to his people and also treating his women well. As the harem is getting bigger, the women get increasingly more divers in character and get the fitting treatment by the MC (he fulfills their longings/how they want to be treated/diminishing their fears and worries... It's hard to explain). They also don't get forgotten and have all found their use/purpose in the daily life in the harem. The world background is also reasonably deep. The MC appears on a map surrounded by other kingdoms, who all have their own court and political struggles. The spionage and political aspect of this novel would work if the world background wasn't solid enough. Another point in this regard that I really like is, that all the "things" given by the system have a relevant back story as they were "implanted" into the world beforehand and don't appear out of nowhere. And the MC growing up as wastrel is a good reason why he knows nothing about this world and needs explanations from time to time. The story develops slow and steady, not at snails speed but not too fast either. The system mainly rewards the MC for getting a child (till chapter 578 he only has 8 children), whereas the women's ability to conceive is restricted the higher their material arts realm is, meaning he's not constantly getting reward after reward. This also allows the MC to slowly adapt and grow into the political scene (he was 18 when he died and grew up in new world as wastrel, so he knows nothing). A charm of this novel is to see all of this progress slowly over time and develop further. I can't say much to the updating stability, haven't encountered any big issues yet. This review gave me quite the headache. I don't know what it is about this book that makes me like and dislike it at the same time. In the end, looking at my review it's still overall positive and I can only recommend reading it, which is quite a surprise to me as I'm usually no fan of modern technology in this kind of setting. Overall the only thing I can think of right now which I'd wish could improve is, that his children are mentioned way too less considering the importance of their birth for which the system grants him rewards. I'd love to see more interaction between them as they grow up.
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