REVIEW: You've Got Mail: The Perils of Pigeon Post, Vol. 1 (book) written by Blackegg, illustrated by Ninemoon, translated by alexsh

You've Got Mail: The Perils of Pigeon Post is Chinese historicalish m/m erotica. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review:

Wu Xingzi, advisor to the magistrate of the remote Qingcheng County, is 39 years old, poor, and all alone in the world. His parents died when he was young, and he's never really had any close friends. He's gay, and although the people around him don't take issue with this, he's never had a lover. With nothing to look forward to except the grave site he's picked out for himself, he decides to commit suicide after confessing his feelings to a handsome local tofu seller.

To Wu Xingzi's shock, the tofu seller tells him that he's also gay - however, he's in a relationship. He tells Wu Xingzi about the Peng Society for Gentleman, through which he met his own lover. It's a society for gay men to meet other gay men via messenger pigeons. Hope blossoms in Wu Xingzi's heart, and he decides to pay his first month's subscription fee for The Pengornisseur, a catalog of portraits and basic information about other Peng Society members.

Wu Xingzi sends out a few letters with the expectation that he might eventually make a few like-minded friends. To his shock, the response to every letter he sends out is an illustration of the recipient's penis. Suddenly, Wu Xingzi's goal shifts from making friends to collecting as many dick pics as he can...until a particular favorite of his prompts him to send a response of his own, and he captures the attention of the notorious and powerful Guan Shanjin. 

The publisher description for this one sounded like it could be messy and amusing, but beyond that I wasn't really sure what to expect. Wu Xingzi was a surprise. Everyone who meets him assumes he'd be the type to fall in love easily - in reality, it's more like he falls in lust easily. Guan Shanjin is the "love 'em and leave 'em" type, always the first to break things off with whichever Peng Society member has caught his eye...until he meets Wu Xingzi, who enjoys the sex but 100% expects Guan Shanjin to view him as a one-night stand and is a little confused why the man won't let him get back to admiring his precious dick pics. 

Except for a few twinges when he sees the tenderness between the tofu seller and his lover, Wu Xingzi doesn't seem to have a romantic bone in his body, which pisses Guan Shanjin off to no end (never mind that he'd planned to dump Wu Xingzi like everyone else). It's all a mess, though - Guan Shanjin is actually in love with his teacher (Wu Xingzi and Guan Shanjin's other Peng Society lovers were chosen for their resemblance to the man), who's preparing to marry the daughter of a respectable family. 

The messy relationships might have been worth continuing this series for, if it weren't for the sex. The scenes are very explicit and fairly lengthy (although not as frequent as I expected - maybe 3 or 4 scenes total?), which wouldn't necessarily be a problem, except some of the details crossed the line for me and were just gross. The second sex scene, which included urethral play, was the one I most wish I could scrub from my brain, but pretty much all the sex scenes ended with Wu Xingzi peeing himself, which I also wasn't wild about.

So yeah. As amusing as Guan Shanjin's frustration was, I'll stop here.

Extras:

Two full-color illustrations (one of which is the cover art), black-and-white illustrations throughout, an interview with the author, and a character and name guide.