The Dumb Husky and His White Cat Shizun is a Chinese xianxia webnovel that, despite it’s cutesy seeming title and description, is incredibly dark and graphically violent. It’s a 300+ chapter epic that has been adapted into an audio drama, and has a sizable following for it’s angsty narrative, gripping drama and of course, piping hot smut, despite facing the hammer of censorship over it’s explicit chapters.

Mo Ran, who took over the world and became the ruling Emperor Taxian-Jun, dies and reincarnates back in time to when he was only 16 years old, and has the chance to do everything over again. This time around, he doesn’t want to be evil, and so he decides to correct his mistakes and alter the course of history. During his past life, he had born a hate filled grudge against his Shizun, Chu WanNing, and had held him captive and forced him to become his concubine to exact his revenge against him. In this new timeline however, he finds that he is instead falling in love with him! But the shadow of their former relationship in the previous timeline hangs over them still as Chu WanNing finds he keeps having dreams about a much more sinister and dominating version of his student.

WRITING
The book explores themes of redemption and morality very well, exploring Mo Ran’s struggle with his darker desires, the guilt of his past life, and his attempts to remedy things during his miraculous second chance. Meanwhile, there is a large scale plot unfolding around the main characters, involving racial tensions between humans and demons, and ultimately the fate of the world. Unfortunately, the actual structure of that story is a little all over the place and the author loves twists to exhausting extents, and isn’t so great at using foreshadowing. (By the end I was getting frustrated and cursing every new twist) As such, the thematic resonance tends to fall apart a little bit, and all in all the scope of the story may have been a little too ambitious. It may have been a stronger piece if the author had dialed down the size of things and maybe focused a little more just on the main two character’s developing relationship. However, it’s certainly a very gripping and exciting story, especially if you are a fan of angst and drama as there is plenty of that to spare.

EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT
Although it took me a little time to fall in love with this book’s cast, once I did there was no going back. Each and every one of the main characters in this narrative managed to shine, from the main couple to the supporting cast and even the antagonists. The relationship between the main two is a tumultuous one, deeply toxic and struggling to fix itself, and characterized by unhealthy codependency and a vicious hate-lust. It was a fascinating ride to watch as these characters struggled through the mire of circumstance to bring healing and growth to a relationship that had previously been so tainted, and I was deeply invested in that growth and development. This had some of the most gripping character arcs, and some of the most complex and nuanced characters I have seen, and there wasn’t a single core character that didn’t experience dynamic changes as a part of their character arc. There’s also a heavy helping of angst in all of their backstories, so get ready for the water works! The only flaw in the emotional investment department is perhaps a bit too much backstorying with side characters that don’t warrant it, and giving a few too many mini arcs that pad out the length while distracting from the main focus.

WORLDBUILDING
There is a nice amount of worldbuilding here and I really enjoyed the xianxia setting a lot! The ideas in the book are well thought through and there’s a good amount of cohesion to the world to set up the plot with. There are many details that left me wanting more, like the demon vs human relations, the rifts between worlds, and the use of time travel, all of which contributed to the plot and made for a very fun kind of action adventure story. I love the use of multiple timelines creating fractured versions of characters, and found that the world in general felt very rich and expansive.

STEAMINESS
Easily the biggest draw of this book is the smut. Since the relationship between the main characters is so strained and so toxic to begin with, the smut tends towards being a dichotomy between incredibly brutally violent and abusive, and being sweet and tender and sensual. The two kinds of scenes are often interposed upon each other for contrast sake, and it makes a very fascinating reading experience. The original timeline’s Taxian-Jun’s abuse of Chu WanNing is explored in bursts, while the new timeline’s Mo Ran is trying to atone and take things slow with Chu WanNing. Ultimately there are a lot of heavy feelings on both sides of that coin, as the hatred that Mo Ran originally felt for his Shizun was always of an obsessive, codependent nature that makes for a lot of incredibly hot, and very kinky smut. I absolutely loved the noncon scenes in this, especially since they were dripping with confusion and conflicted emotions rife with humiliation warring with affection.

This is a book that, while incredibly hot, could have benefited from being quite a bit shorter. It’s a beast of a thing to get through but it’s well worth reading if you like noncon, explorations of toxic codependency or angsty drama and ill-fated relationships. This is a star crossed lovers story with a side of Master/slave kink and I really really love it’s characters and ideas. I just wish it had been a little more focused and concise.

Have you read The Dumb Husky and his White Cat Shizun? Let me know what YOU thought my leaving me a comment!

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