disgracetoscholars | Burn the Book, Bury the Scholar: Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage (Reply)

Burn the Book, Bury the Scholar: Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage/重生之将门毒后

Burn the Book, Bury the Scholar is how we extend the suffering of Canary Reports, because we’re masochists in multiple mediums (and languages, hollyberries) and we want to really share that fact with the world.

Premise: Shen Miao devoted herself to serving her husband on his climb to the Imperial throne, even going so far as to be a hostage in an enemy country. After her sacrifices have resulted in a peaceful reign, she finds out that her husband never loved her, her cousins conspired to sabotage her, and she’s been ordered to commit suicide as a joke of an empress. And her babies are dead. That also was a thing that happened. Swearing revenge, she dies, and wakes up in her 14 year old body, having remembered all of her past life. Some might keep their baggage in the past (life), but why do that when you can destroy the lives of those who wronged you?

Read: 180/231 Chapters

Completely Translated: No

What I Loved: The protagonist, Shen Miao, has a pretty strong bond with her parents and brother. She wants them to be safe, even as she pursues revenge. Their protection is very much a part of her revenge, and they reciprocate the warm sentiment. It’s nice to see a close knit family in a cnovel¹, even if her relationships with everybody else Shen² are decidedly murderous.

In direct contrast to the warm and fuzzy immediate family feelings, Shen Miao’s relationship with the male lead is more of a slow burn to amoral power coupledom. They’re working towards goals that occasionally intersect, and early on will form temporary alliances as a situation requires, but they have to grow to like each other. Once the male lead does, though, he’s a ridiculous murderbird and it’s great.

To quote the Da Jie of Disgrace To Scholars, “When Shen Miao slaps your face it stays slapped”. lazulisong nails it. If they can recover afterwards, they weren’t destroyed, they were merely inconvenienced for a while. Shen Miao goes for Revenge Gold, and anybody left breathing after her strike won’t be for long. Just long enough that the blood’s not obviously on her hands.

What I Disliked: This is pretty common in cnovels, but hoo boy that misogyny. Shen Miao and her inner circle are protected, but women marked for revenge suffer, and sexual violence is usually involved. It’s off-screen or implied, but still there. Also the idea that a woman’s Best By Date is 17 years old is a gross as fuck concept.

A large part of the original life’s plot is, Shen Miao was a gullible teenager who naively believed her family wouldn’t hurt her³, and had tacky taste in jewelry⁴ (which, don’t we all, at fourteen?). Hence how she was completely blindsided by the betrayal of her husband and cousins. Was she evil? No, not at all. She just really liked a guy and either by chance or manipulation got put into situations where she gained a reputation for shamelessness. By the time she reincarnates/gets reborn, that reputation has already been established. And Shen Miao can’t seem to shake it (she sure does weaponize it, though). People bring up her “poor” behavior in any new social situation in the novel. It just got a little obnoxious to read the fourth time that she walks into a gathering and a crowd 180s from “I heard she was a hussy” to “Oh, who is this cultured lady”. This is a pretty minor grievance, especially compared to the “oh my god misogyny” issue above, but whatever, it annoyed me.

Caveats/Considerations: This is very much a woman out for revenge through guile and strategy, and she’s playing the long game of maximum damage to her enemies and minimal threats to her people. So the plot is going to build slowly. Also, cannot stress this enough, MISOGYNY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE TO WOMEN.

Would I Recommend: If you like time-travel fix-its, revenge epics, or amoral power couples, then yes, I would recommend it 100%. It took me a few chapters to get into the pace of the translation, but once I was in, I was in. I enjoyed it enough to make it my first Burn the Book, Bury the Scholar Literary Commentary, giving all of you the false impression that BtBBtS will be discussing quality het cnovels regularly. Spoilers, we aren’t. This will be mostly terrible Boys Love.

Rating: On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being So Much Quality, I give this an 8 for appealing to my id with a wronged lady out for revenge.

Common Tropes Observed: Transmigration/Reincarnation, Revenge, Power Couple (all played straight)

I won’t link to the (still in progress) translation of Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage, because we’re on uncertain footing regarding the legalities of fan translations of web novels, but if somebody were to google this mouthful of a title, I suspect you might find what you’re looking for.

^{1. Daughters are, by default, expendable. They’re the ones who marry out of the family, with a sizeable dowry the family needs to provide, and also Confucius set women subservient to men (first their fathers, then their husbands, then their sons), and financially dependent on those men (shout out to Northern Wei and Tang dynasties for women owning property and therefore having a say in financial decisions). So the bond between Shen Miao and her family is particularly noteworthy. Her family goes out of their way to prioritize Shen Miao’s happiness and health.↩}

^{2. hollyberries raised my awareness on a nuance I had completely missed regarding family dynamics and politics. The Shen Family has three branches: the primary branch and two secondary branches. Shen Miao, her parents and her brother are the primary. Her father is the only son of her grandfather’s first wife. The two secondary branches are her paternal uncles, their wives, and their children. Her uncles are the sons of her grandfather’s second wife, who is still alive in novel. This distinction matters, because for all that they’re “family” to the outside world, there are lines drawn between “us” and “them”. Shen Miao 1.0 was ignorant of these lines, as were her parents. So they assumed a lot of good faith that was. not. there. Even if a full blood relation, in-fighting and power plays can still happen.↩}

^{3. See footnote one about why this is foolish of her. I love you, hollyberries.↩}

^{4. Knowledge dropped by hollyberries on that one. Shen Miao in her first life wore really tacky, gold-heavy jewelry that wasn’t excellent craftsmanship. She also paired the jewelry with gauche fabric. So Shen Miao 1.0 was dressing bougie as hell. And her dressing so nouveau riche was actually treated as an indictment of her character, because only peasants and merchants were so obvious in displaying any wealth. Nice piece of classicism, that. Shen Miao was wearing a lot of this because she deferred to the suggestions of her aunts and cousins, by the way. Even as her maids tried to gently hint “Don’t wear that, Lady, it’s tawdry as hell”, Shen Miao 1.0 would still trust her family, and that is some sabotage right there.↩}