Song Yue Yi experienced a lifetime of massive ups and downs. Although she was born with a golden spoon in her mouth, she ended up with a severely tarnished reputation, and was ultimately evicted from the capital. Subsequently, she was captured and enslaved by the neighbouring state, Bai Di, and tasted all the flavours of life.
Finally, when Song Yue Yi was at Death’s door, she managed to discern Zhao Che, astride a horse and with a sabre in his hand, rushing over to be by her side. Scooping her up from the ground, Zhao Che promised to bring her home.
Everybody in the whole wide world knew, that Song Yue Yi and Zhao Che had been arch-rivals since their youth.
However, when she woke up once more, Song Yue Yi discovered that both Zhao Che and her were in the midst of being punished and forced to kneel in the prayer room before Buddha, and that the youthful Zhao Che was as skilled as ever in turning his poisonous tongue on her – to the extent that Song Yue Yi wanted to pounce on him and smack him silly.
After much thought, Song Yue Yi resolved with great determination, to interact peacefully with Zhao Che, and to build a supportive, co-operative relationship with him. If possible, Song Yue Yi wished that the both of them could remain loyal, loving cousins.
In the end, the both of them did end up loving each other very much……
The proud and arrogant youth entrapped her tightly within his embrace, his long fingers playfully twirling with her long, luscious locks as he tried to coax and persuade her.
“Marry me, and I’ll give you everything you ever wanted.”
“I can even give you my life, if you wanted.”
Song Yue Yi:… Something doesn’t seem to be right here.
[Ebook]
This was also another novel which I came across in my continued (and somewhat futile) attempts to locate a good, well developed novel set in the ancient times. Now, as with most stories utilizing the “rebirth” troupe, we begin our novel with the introduction of our downtrodden, suffering female lead – Song Yue Yi – who, despite having lived nearly an entire life of privilege, wealth and royalty, ultimately ended up being abducted by the enemy country and utilized as an excuse for her home country and enemy country to wage war against each other, and was now near the brink of death. Just before she inhales her final breath, her cousin and “arch-rival”, Zhao Che, finally succeeds in locating and rescuing her, but was, unfortunately, ultimately unable to save her. And… the next time Song Yue Yi woke up, she found herself “reborn” in her 11-year-old younger self, with an opportunity to rectify all the mistakes she had made in her previous life.
The novel is generally well-paced, with our male and female leads developing (in terms of character development and relationship development) in a relatively smooth manner as we see them grow from young, mischievous children with an insatiable penchant for teasing and annoying the other party, to older, mature, youths who learn how to express their love in a more caring manner. The “revelation” of the truth (i.e. Song Yue Yi’s rebirth) is also adequately done here – despite our female lead’s uncanny ability to ‘predict’ the future despite her inexperience, our male lead was always ready to give our female lead space, and take her words at face value without question. It is only when the female lead inadvertently crosses the line (by publicly risking her life to save her admirer (who had saved our female lead countless times in her previous life) despite our female lead’s engagement to the male lead) when our male lead demands an explanation for our female lead’s inexplicable behaviour.
What is, however, lacking in this novel, is the development of the antagonist – our key antagonist, who abducted the female lead in her previous life, and posed the greatest threat to our male lead and female lead – was unfortunately given minimal “screen time” and was sorely underdeveloped and underutilized (in part, due to his late appearance in the novel), and his entire appearance was anti-climatic, to say the least.
All in all, an adequate / fair / unoffensive novel in the rebirth genre, but not exactly something to shout home about.