This novel is far from perfect. Its main selling point is a fairly well done overpowered female protagonist. On the other hand, its main weaknesses are a terrible sense of blind Chinese nationalism, the weirdly stupid mind games that all the characters face, as well as the complete lack of research the author has done on any of the subjects presented in the novel.
I first began reading this novel both because of the amazing review score it had, as well as for a cross-dressing protagonist. The story starts off quite well, with a female lead who dies in her own world but is pulled into reincarnating into a future world because of a "grandpa teacher"-like spiritual entity inside her mind. It continues on to quite hilarious descriptions of her mother and the other characters around her as she slowly progresses through life pretending to be a boy in order to be able to inherit her father's inheritance and legacy.
The characters in the novel, up to the point I've read, are quite interesting. They're all varied in personality and working through their own motivations as they interact with our heroine Ling Lan. We have an overbearing mother character, a kind grandpa figure who's also a hidden ninja, a stupid yet competent AI assistant, as well as a wide range of friends that collect around her. Yet the most interesting character is still the MC Ling Lan, who despite being an incredibly talented girl pretending to be a boy, only has the single objective of having a normal life and ultimately giving birth to the most talented child possible.
Another aspect of this author that I really like is her skill in describing battles. The author has a natural talent for describing and directing melee fights between individuals. While there isn't much focus on any actual martial arts or actual techniques, the author still does a good job with understanding the capabilities and physical limits of the human body and expressing the fights as a natural and fluid manner. However, at the same time, the author is quite terrible at understanding the limitations of non-human entities.
This brings me to one of the main areas where the author has been negligent - her research into science fiction. This is undoubtedly a science-fiction work, but this novel does nothing more than throw around the jargon without understanding what any of it actually is. Ling Lan's "AI Assistant", named Little Four, is more of a little kid than an AI. At times he's smart and competent, but most of the time he's nothing more than a little kid throwing a tantrum (though this adds to the comedy). As things go, this is a terrible trait for any AI assistant to have. Next, there are the mechas. While I congratulate the author for adding the detail that the main obstacle for a mecha pilot is being able to withstand the G-forces of the constant accelerations the vehicle has to face, at the same time I also have to blame the author for not understanding the slightest bit about the mechas themselves. When faced with a complicated system like a humanoid robot, she believes that it's only possible to completely control such a robot using hand motions to individually manipulate each joint of the robot, causing a huge amount of stress on the hand-speed of the operators. She has completely refused the idea that such systems might use computer assistance to automate the processes, and views AI in controlling robots as a bad thing. This is only annoying when you consider that any AI system as advanced as the ones in this story should be able to pilot these mechas far better than any human operator ever could. In addition, there are several instances where weapons are magically enhanced by the addition of an AI into them, breaking out of physical limitations that they should not have ever been able to break out of.
Ultimately, while this is a science-fiction story, it's also a terrible example of the science-fiction genre as it completely fails to understand the implications, uses, and limitations of the very technology it introduces.
On a related note is the idea that kids mature much faster than in the past. In the story, it's completely understandable that kids are much more physically developed because of the various gene-stimulating agents and chemical therapies that they undergo from a young age. However, at the same time, there is no explanation for why 6-year-old kids have the same level of mental maturity and genius as a grown man. Right from the beginning, we see 6-year-olds engaged in mind-games and politics against each other. This would be okay if the story presented some form of explanation for why these kids have such mental stimulation, but if we just look at the experiences of the MC Ling Lan, there is no instance where the kids undergo any kind of mental augmentation at all. Even for Ling Lan, there is no explanation for why the "learning space" provided by her AI assistant expects 6-month-old children to be able to understand the human language and also start playing mind-games against trained military instructors in order to obtain training.
One of the more annoying aspects of the story is the author's obsession with Chinese nationalism. Right from the beginning, we are made to understand that the new Federation is just the author's idea of a Chinese space empire. Later on, we learn that their main enemies are the Empire, which is overtly declared to be a Japanese colonial space empire, signaled by their use of the rising sun as their symbol and how their commanders all use childish Japanese words in the middle of the military talks to further clue the readers to that fact. The author also makes it clear of her vehement hate for the Japanese in several passages where she references the Nanking Massacre. The Japanese troops are always dressed in black, have black mechas, and are blamed for a lot of the faults in the government because of their agents who have infiltrated the Chinese government. In addition, the Japanese commanders are portrayed as incompetent egotistical maniacs who know nothing about their own troops and have to rely on their subordinates to make decisions for them. The Empire is very clearly a stand-in to express the author's own rage against the Japanese.
The author also has a terrible habit of releasing spoilers in the middle of the story. It's as if the author is constantly afraid that her readers can't understand the implications of things, as she often reveals what will happen in the later chapters as an implication of the decisions that are taken in the current chapter. For example, very early into the story, in the middle to talking about Ling Lan's father's legacy, the author directly tells us that her father is not actually dead and will return in a later chapter, directly spoiling a major part of the story for us.
Overall, this story is cute and humorous. It fits into the standard trope of female-oriented CN novels where we see an overpowered female lead who plays mind-games to defeat all her opponents. However, don't come into this story expecting to find any actual science-fiction elements, competent villains, or extremely consistent internal logic.
