A Third Ascension & A New Debt To Pay

If you are on the right part of the internet, you will have certainly heard of the Heaven Official’s Blessing series. Following Xie Lian, a Crown Prince who has now ascended for a third time, he finds himself running around the mortal world trying to fix problems caused by humans, ghosts, and even other Heavenly Officials.

How Did I Find Heaven Official’s Blessing?

I, like most others, was bombarded on most social media platforms about the amazing new story from China. Lucky for me, my roommate had already found this series and just so happened to have the first two novels sitting on his bookshelf. The final push was adding this series to my TBR and… actually having Heaven Official’s Blessing be the next book on my list.

Well, I guess now I have to start this daunting EIGHT BOOK SERIES. I am not one to be drawn into long series, even three or four books seem long to me. I have never once tried to read an eight-novel series, so this will test my attention span and memory.

Impressions of Book One

My first chunk of pages was a bit of a drag due to the backstory information and all the name drops. Of course, a book will need to let the reader know what they are getting into, but without knowing Xie Lian yet, I couldn’t connect with his backstory of ascending and being thrown back down to the mortal realm.

Whenever the Junior Officials joined in, I started to have hope. The dynamics between everyone were funny, and the mission to solve the mystery of the Ghost Groom was something that I wanted to get into.

The next big moment that got my attention was the introduction of San Lang. I am obsessed with how San Lang acts like a puppy, following Xie Lian around, making sure he doesn’t get hurt. Whenever Xie Lian does get injured, San Lang turns into a pouty child who has tunnel vision until he finds a way to fix everything.

About halfway through, I was invested. After Xie Lian jumped into the Sinner’s Pit, I was 100% committed to this series.

I will be forever thankful that I had my roommate to talk to about this book. The last lines of the second to last chapter had me stomping up to his room and reading the last chapter on his bed while he played Final Fantasy XIV on his computer. He got to enjoy my live commentary as I finished off the first book.

Thoughts on Season One of the Animation

While reading book one, I saw that season two of Heaven Official’s Blessing was airing on Crunchyroll. Season one of the animation brought my roommate into the series and he confirmed that it only covered events in the first book.

We sat down and watched the first few episodes and I loved how pretty the animation was, it captured the feeling I got while reading the story. The only downside of the animation was the episodes were short and they put all of the first novel into 12 episodes. They did a great job, I’m not trying to say that the pacing or the animation was bad in any way, I just would have loved it a lot more because the story is just that good.

One thing that I have loved is that because I read the 300 and something pages of the first book, it felt like I had a bucket full of little bits of extra knowledge. I am never the one to know so much, so this was such a new feeling.

I think you can get an idea of what is going on if you just watch the animation, but I highly recommend reading the novel before watching the animation.