REVIEW: The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish: Canji Baojun De Zhangxin Yu Chong, Vol.2 (book) by Xue Shan Fei Hu, illustrated by Ryoplica, translated by Mimi, Yuka

The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish is danmei, Chinese m/m fantasy romance. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review:

The incident with the second prince's mother is resolved, effectively ending his chances of becoming the Crown Prince. Meanwhile, the third prince becomes more of a problem. Prince Jing becomes closer to Li Yu (named Xianyu as a fish) - Li Yu is unaware that Jing has figured out that his human and fish selves are one and the same. 

Prince Jing is the definition of infatuated. The guy turns his entire home into an elaborate pond for Li Yu. The whole bit about the message carved into the palace walls gave me secondhand embarrassment. The guy does not care one bit what anyone thinks about his feelings for, as far as others are aware, some random dude who just showed up at the palace one day.

This is one of those romances that only works as long as everyone's feelings are relatively in sync. I got the feeling that Prince Jing's Devotion (yes, capital D) could turn into something scary if Li Yu wanted to break up with him. Readers have been given several examples of how ruthless Jing can be when he wants to be. There was an element of jealousy to Jing's feelings that I wasn't fond of, and that made me wonder how their relationship would fare if Jing wasn't aware that Li Yu was the fish who essentially lives with him 24/7.

I'm still willing to roll with it - this still approaches things from a pretty fluffy perspective, and there are some sweet moments - but if Prince Jing were a real-life dude, the red flags would be a concern.

The System's rewards for Li Yu's work are interesting. Not only does Li Yu get some extra fishy abilities and some fun aesthetic upgrades (that Prince Jing then has to bend over backwards to explain in a way that doesn't scream "supernatural!"), he also gets a peek at a couple of Jing's secrets. I wish I'd taken better notes about that stuff, because the details are now a bit fuzzy for me, and I'm sure this will become even more important later on.

All in all, still enjoying this, although those red flags made me wince. I hope that Li Yu gets some good opportunities to establish boundaries and have Jing respect them. That said, Li Yu is definitely not the smartest character in this series (the trouble he gets himself into by the end of this volume, OMG), so I guess we'll see.

Extras:

A couple full-color illustrations (one of which is just the cover illustration), black-and-white illustrations throughout, and an appendix with a character, name, and pronunciation guide, as well as a short glossary.