Cover art by Lemntii (2023).
A Tale of the Jade Road.
Updates Mondays AEST.
[Cross-posting to Wattpad.]
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What to expect:
* Several NSFW scenes (male/female and female/female) including in the first chapter
* Yuri/GL endgame
* No harem
* Not just about the smut! There's a serious storyline here!
* A section of the story veers into xianxia/xuanhuan territory, but the majority of the story is based in Japanese/Shinto/yokai lore
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Eitsu is a cat.
But not just any cat. She has the power to shapeshift into a human body, and what better way to use those opposable thumbs than to cause trouble?!
Unfortunately, the world has other ideas. Ghosts from her past lives keep returning to haunt her, and they're not about to let her go.
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The Tales of the Jade Road are a collection of stories set in the same universe, a historical East Asian-inspired fantasy world where the East and the West are linked by a long trading route, the Jade Road. Other Tales include: At the Water's Edge, I'm Not the Saviour!, and Ginseng and Yew.
*Part of a review swap*
This was an interesting story that started out a little confusing but you quickly begin to understand what is going on. A great way to start a story is because you feel as confused and clueless as the MC throughout the story until she starts figuring out the pieces of her past. I like the MC's personality, but I was confused as to why she went along with her first benefactor’s desire at the beginning. I was confused but then I realized two thing one she’s quite young and the other is she doesn’t think the same way a human might.
The story is paced well. The horror scenes were well-written and easy to visualize. The writing is quite good and descriptive. Some terms are in Japanese but an explanation is given so you always understand what’s going on. I’m assuming she’ll start to recollect and remember her past and what happened. I would recommend doing a side story with each volume flushing out each life as in most stories like this they don’t fully touch on the character's full past but focus on moments that were very important to them and only show a few flashbacks.
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I have greatly enjoyed this story and would thoroughly recommend it!
The big caveat is the Japanese words and translations required to know what's being said for a lot of it - while I did think it made it a bit harder to read, it didn't detract to much for me and I still think the story is a solid five despite this.
I thoroughly enjoyed the prose and writing style otherwise, both the horror and the nsfw scenes are interesting and I am super curious to see how the mystery evolves. I would absolutely recommend giving this a go.
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Great read
I'm no grammar expert but reading this story was very smooth and easy to understand. (Some transitions made me double back, but nothing major.) The way you describe characters were nicely done, it was easy to imagine them in my head.
The little mechanism you use to give description to words was done really well, in a way that didn't break the focus while I was reading.
The story has a cozy feeling to it, it's pacing is pretty good as well. The horror scenes were written in a way that made it easy to visualize. The NSFW scenes are really tamed compared to the other NSFW I've seen on this site, but they are still really good.
I enjoyed the first 5 chapters, they were done well and quick to get through.
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