Title

So APPARENTLY the way to get myself to write is just to come up with elaborate western SF series/non-SF danmei fusions - first was the Scum Villain/Star Trek fusion (which is really x_los's fault honestly), and now I am plotting a Sha Po Lang/Vorkosigan Saga fusion for which I already started a bit of fic for. I suspect any writing for this will be more like, little bits and pieces, because I don't reaaaaaally feel like rewriting all of Sha Po Lang and there isn't another major plot arc (yet, anyway).

(If this intrigues anyone on either front, I have epubs of both canons, heh)

(partially adapted from stuff I've said on Twitter and Discord, so apologies for the repetition if you saw it there!)

I picked up the epub of Little Mushroom: Judgement Day from Peach Flower House, which is the first of two volumes (no word yet on a release date for the second volume). I was familiar with the TLer from some of their fan TL work, which was decent enough, a number of people I know from other danmei fandoms liked the novel, and I wanted to support a smaller publisher (particularly given various ongoing messes with Seven Seas...) - and $16 for a book was an acceptable gamble (versus $36 for the cheapest of the Seven Seas offerings).

And I am happy to say I was pleasantly surprised!

( Translation/formatting review (no spoilers) )

( Novel review (minor spoilers) )

The novel is split at the same point the mainland Chinese print edition was split into volumes, and honestly it's a really solid choice of split point - there's resolution of some plot elements, so it's not a total cliffhanger moment even if some stuff is left hanging. I contemplated reading the old fan TL (done by a different person) via archive.org for about as long as it took me to dig it up and discover that it's.... not good. The novel and I both deserve better than that, so I'll just eagerly await volume 2.

tl;dr: A solid translation of a really engaging dystopian post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel, which I enjoyed immensely!