Reincarnation and recursive gay romance books seem to be a running theme of 2024 releases. I didn’t read all of them, but The Emperor and the Endless Palace seemed like the type of gay romance that was going to push past the cliches plaguing gay romances both in and out of fantasy spaces at the moment. And despite some classic debut-novel issues, it was exactly what I was looking for.
Read If Looking For: romances that aren’t quite Romances, looping narratives, lustful gay men, historical queer representation
Avoid if Looking For: saccharine queer stories, or books that aren’t romance heavy
Elevator Pitch:
Two men, soulmates, find each other across various lifetimes. Dong Xian is a clerk at the Endless Palace 2,000 years ago, scheming for power. He Shican is something of a lost soul, an innkeeper in the woods of China in the 1700s. And River, who immigrated to America as a young child, is has recently come out and is exploring his identity in the hedonistic LA queer community. As their stories progress, so too do they intersect, replay, and unravel.
What Worked for Me
This book was deliciously carnal. It is a story that unabashedly embraces the physical side of attraction and queer sexual identities. And while there is some of the more traditional ‘spice’ in it, the story tends to present it starkly, without a clear intent to arouse. Pretty much every chapter either includes a sex scene of some sort or references one. As an example, the first three chapters (where we meet our three leads) involve
- A teenager in the 1700s having a midnight rendezvous involving peach eating (literal and metaphorical) before being exiled by his father for his homosexuality
- A relatively low-level palace clerk who ‘makes the rounds’ of his regulars at the palace to gather gossip about a new soldier who arrived at the palace so he could leverage that information for more power
- A college student attending his first circuit party with a guy he just met from Grindr
The whole setup for these storylines was excellent. I felt yanked in immediately from the start and think the author really nailed some tough dynamics and topics. The author has a talent for writing for impact. There were many moments where, despite a relatively straightforward style of writing, I felt like I was in the story (special shout out to the Dowager Empress Fu for being wonderfully imposing).
Putting that aside, there’s a really wonderfully conversational tone to the stories. The bled together a little bit (I wish there had been more distinction between narrative style, even if they were reincarnations of past selves), but it felt like the right voice for the stories that were being told. As with most books that trace multiple storylines, I had a favorite (Dong Xian’s adventure at the endless palace really gripped me), and the book was willing to take some risks in how love stories are supposed to go that really paid off. I appreciated how it was willing to do something different, instead of giving me the same trope filled love story I’ve read (and loved) over and over again. I really appreciated how the book was frank in engaging with queer (and more specifically gay male) culture and identity across a variety of different times and spaces.
What Didn’t Work for Me
For the first 75 pages or so, I thought this book was going to be an easy 5/5 stars. It grabbed me with narratives I don’t see in fantasy, did a good job of capturing the instant spark of eternal reincarnated love, and set up some interesting character dynamics. In the end though, I don’t think they all played out equally well. In particular the modern LA storyline fell apart, as it tried for a modern day aesthetic but ended up feeling like a near-future science fiction analogue whenever the douchey billionaire showed up. Otherwise, there were some general fumbles in small moments where I could see ‘debut novel’ poking through. Things small enough to make me pause, but not noticeable until they began to stack up.
And, in the end, I couldn’t help but compare it Welcome to Forever, a book I read earlier in the year, and had similarly recursive and cyclical examinations of toxic relationship dynamics. Ultimately, I think Welcome to Forever did a better job of embracing the inherent messiness of this premise, capturing the confusing nature I imagine these experiences would be like. Overall though, I think it was a really wonderful book. I loved Emperor and the Endless Palace, but it had the misfortune of coming shortly after a similar book that’s made it into my list of all time favorites.
Still, Huang is an an author I will absolutely be keeping tabs on. This was a great novel, and it’s clear he’s interested in telling the types of stories I’m interested in reading.
In Conclusion: A love story, but not a capital R Romance, that succeeds in embracing queer experiences and reimagining them in cool ways. I wish it had been more avant-garde than it ended up being, but it was a really wonderful debut novel.
- Characters – 4
- Worldbuilding – 4
- Craft – 3
- Themes – 4
- Enjoyment – 4
Marked for Plot 