Read-in-Progress Thursday

[geraineon]

This is your weekly read-in-progress post~

For spoilers:

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Comments

[geraineon]

Sorry, IRL has been incredibly busy this week and last. Please talk amongst yourselves!

[silverblade219]

still in knovel, but started reading the novel for Third Wheel Strikes Back, now that the fan translation has reach the point that some reviews mark as a significant plot twist. There isn't a romance subplot, though as far as I can tell the queerplatonic ot3 is the intended canonical reading for the main characters, which I think is great.

[duckprintspress]

ooo I do love me a qpr ot3...

[silverblade219]

The ot3 is supported by the world building as well - the royal family is expected to take both a Political Partner and a Religious Partner, the Religious Partner is described as “the other half of their soul” - not sure yet if it is literally soulbinding or figuratively.

The main character (transmigrating into the 2nd male lead character) initially thinks that the original ml (the prince) and fl (the original transmigrator) will fall in love with each eventually, even though the storyline has already changed and so far they both consider themselves rivals for the mc affection lol.

[duckprintspress]

oh man that sounds *great*

[geraineon]

How is the quality of the fantl?

[silverblade219]

I think that the quality of the fantl is good.

[duckprintspress]

I read Tailhook by La Rive Gauche. It was fine, nothing particularly good nothing particularly bad. If I'd known it was a spin-off from The Approach I might have waited to read it until that's out; as it was it was sometimes hard to know if an issue I spotted was something that would have been explained in The Approach, because my main complaints were with pacing, and feel like a lot of parts I would have wanted to actually read as actual narrative were instead glossed over really quickly.

But, the sex was hot and there was a LOT of it. I think this is the first danmei I've read with switching.

[geraineon]

Are you gonna get The Approach as well? Perhaps a reread after reading The Approach will help.

The switching is about the only thing I've heard about Tailhook! XD (I think The Approach too)

[duckprintspress]

Yeah, I've pre-ordered vol 1 of The Approach, and especially in light of reading Tailhook, which I basically enjoyed, I definitely expect to read the other. I'll wait until I have all the volumes tho, and yeah, I'll maybe reread? I'll certainly keep my eyes open for mentioned of the two main characters in Tailhook, Zhou Qichen and Lang Feng. I'll probably see how The Approach plays out and decide then if I think Tailhook would benefit from a reread.

Considering how much of the book is just these two fucking it's a little hard to say much else about it lmfao. The TL:DR is that Zhou Qichen, the mc, is a former military pilot who switched to commercial aviation after a serious accident that he barely survived. He's got some pretty major self-esteem and trust issues. Lang Feng is a sunshine golden boy of a young commercial pilot who was raised in Europe and speaks at least three languages fluently as a result. They meet at a party hosted by the mc of The Approach (at least I'm like 95% sure that's who he is) and fall into bed together and casual dating, but when Lang Feng tries to make it more serious, they end up breaking up instead, and the rest of the book is how they go from sex to breaking up to actually dating to forever. There's not really any plot aside from their relationship and relationship development, and often scenes that would have shown them growing closer as people are skimmed over in favor of them having ever more sex, so it reads a little stilted and like some of the parts I'd have actually wanted to, ya know, read through actually happening instead get glossed over.

But the writing wasn't bad, and all in all it wasn't bad for a single-volume danmei novel.

[geraineon]

At least it's not gonna be an eight volume monster of a novel series!

Mm, I wonder if there's an audio drama for this... usually having voice acting can smooth over these issues.

[duckprintspress]

ooo maybe, idk! I finally started listening to my first a.d. recently... but unsurprisingly it was TGCF lol.