Media Round Up: Back Again

After the last media roundup I resolved to be better at keeping notes, and try not to have such big gaps between roundups. So I've been watching various things and even reading a little and I have enough to make post. So here you go:

The Scarlet Alchemist by Kylie Lee Baker— So I ended up deciding not to finish this book, after reading about ⅔ but I want to talk about it anyway. This YA novel is a mix of cool worldbuilding and things that make me go “argh, it doesn’t work like that!” It’s set in an alternative Tang China where someone invented a way to live forever a 100 years ago. Fortunately/unfortunately I now know a lot more than the average anglophone SFF reader about Tang China and have lots of opinions about it. So the gold coins and one piece garments for women were rather grating. For a while the cool bits outweighed the annoying bits, but as the book went on it started to feel more and more “standard YA” and I eventually got frustrated and quit

The Truth Season 2— I can’t explain why I’m finding this Chinese reality show so compelling, but I’m lowkey obsessed with it! The premise is that a bunch of actors are playing a series of very elaborate murder mystery dinner party type games. I already was a fan of about half of the cast before I started watching this and the rest have all grown on me. They have many fun costumes – especially in the episodes set in 1924, and the cyberpunk episodes. I confess that I don’t always follow the mysteries completely, but I enjoy watching them trying to figure things out and how twisty the mysteries generally are.

( Rival Magic,Fighting for Love, My Journey to You, and Imperial Coroner )