If you love an easygoing, full of humour, historical but also with some supernatural elements and a romance to die for manga/manhwa/manhua then this is the right one to pick up.

Short summary in my own words:

The female protagonist, Qian Yunxi, was raised on a Mt. Lin Yun because she has the ability to see the supernatural which is deemed bad and that it brings bad luck. She is the prime minister's daughter and although she is the older sister she is a concubine's daughter so she is not held up to such high standards as the second sister who is the legitimate wife's child. Prime minister wants more power so he is not on great terms with the royal family so when the order comes that his daughter must marry one of the princes he sends the daughter he doesn't care about. Qian Yunxi accepts this proposal because she wants to get off the mountain. Marriage goes through and on the first night the prince tells her she is not wanted and there is one other he considers to be good enough to be his wife. Qian is sent to the worst rundown part of the palace. But for Qian, this is not so bad. She, as a wife, has enough freedom and yet, she doesn't need to do her marital duties. She takes this situation as a positive and with a positive attitude and extreme bravery slowly changes the lives of everyone around here, as well as the cold prince's heart.

My thoughts:

In my opinion, this is almost as good as it gets in this genre of manga or if you will, manhua or manhwa (manga not produced in Japan). It is on point of everything it presents itself to be. It is very funny (I laughed my heart out in the scene where she throws a chicken she purchased at the market, just trust me on this one, go read please), it is very romantic, it is serious when it needs to be, the supernatural element enriches the whole plot, it doesn't shy away from the political discussions and we come to the most important part perhaps - the heroine - she is amazing.

The heroine is truly a heroine. She is independent, she is extremely intelligent and capable, she knows how to handle herself in most situations, she is not a damsel in distress, she is the one who often saves those around her, she kicks as% and she has a pure heart. I have not come across such a capable and well written heroine in a very long time.
The prince starts off as an unlikable tyrant-like-bastard who is cold, ruthless and cunning but unwilling to deal with anything that doesn't personally benefit him. As the story develops we actually see that that is just a front. He has much more layers and a lot of the things he has done can be interpreted differently with the right context. He grows significantly when around our capable heroine. He has a great aura about him and the way he handles situations makes me giggle and blush like a little girl. But he has his vulnerable side too and later on we learn that he is actually much more innocent than we could ever have imagined. Now that is great character writing, totally takes you by surprise.
There are many more other characters who are more or less important, and more or less developed but I believe it is better left for the actual reading experience now that the basics have been laid out.

The romance is the type that makes your heart skip a beat, you blush and you also wish you were the heroine. Prince is the possessive type and I really honestly love that. I know some people don't and that is okay. We are all different. I respect people who say they don't like even a little jealousy or possessiveness but for me that is absolutely amazing. The prince takes care of our heroine and he would go to the depths of hell for her. Since this is a fictional story I think it is safe to enjoy it and savour it. Boy, is this romance delightful.

The Chinese setting and the animation style is absolutely beautiful. I enjoyed every single page, every single image. It is different, it is unique and it is definitely worthy of reading and admiring.

For the final note. The anime that was made based on this manga is pretty much faithful to the manga, although there are differences. As always, manga has much more details, much more characters, a lot of the special moments between our hero and heroine that anime just cannot condense the same in a dozen episodes. If you are interested in this story I would definitely say go first with the manga and then enjoy the anime rendition.

Picking up Uncomfortably Happily was a personal reason of mine - to really understand what is it like living in country side. This manhwa graphic novel is a semi-biography of Yeon-Sik Hong, a struggling procrastinator artist that struggles to meet its deadline and his supportive wife living near a mountain side further away from Seoul. As they rented a house over there, memories were made, animals were loved, and other troubles assured. As he tries to complete his and revise his drawings and studies in school, he re-discovers life on the country side is so much different than living in a city. Once there, life became free and easy.

I truly enjoy the story and the simple artistic approach of this book. While it does show in a realistic way life living on the mountains can be tough, they were happy and they did give reasons why they are living happily. While situations can be difficult, the couple do what they can to survive and manage to live a life happily before they were forced to move out because of change. Its a nice read and nothing deeper to it. I realize one of my dreams to live on the country side I understand such struggles are real, its a matter whether I can survive in situations that Yeon-Sik Hong experiences. I truly enjoy this book and would recommend if anyone wants to read about life living on the country side.

(read 8/3/16)

Melodramatic, decent art, arrogant male, and stubborn (almost bitchy) female.

Milkyway Hitchhiking is composed of 11 short stories and one bit that I suppose could be called an interlude. Milkyway, a cat named for the gorgeous star-like pattern on her back, is the only thing most of the stories have in common.

I picked this volume up primarily because I loved the cover. Luckily, this is one of those cases where the artwork on the cover gives you a good idea of what to expect in the volume as a whole. All the artwork is in color, except for one story that purposely starts out in shades of gray. Sirial's style has a dreamlike quality to it, and I found myself repeatedly thinking that a Sirial-illustrated picture book would be an absolutely wonderful thing.

The artwork definitely did not disappoint, but what about the stories? That's where things got a bit more “meh.” I did enjoy them, but at one point I put the volume down and didn't pick it up again for months – in fact, I waited so long that I decided to just start over from the beginning when I picked it up again.

A big part of the problem, I think, was that there wasn't much there to grab my attention and keep it from one story to the next. Just as I started to get to know one character, Milkyway moved on, and even Milkyway herself wasn't that intriguing. I got the feeling that Sirial couldn't really decide what to do with her and how far to go. For example, in the very first story, Milkyway demonstrated magical abilities by changing a cat into a human for a few hours, so that he could give the human who saved him and took him in a gift. There were also signs that Milkyway had lived for hundreds (or even thousands?) of years. In many of the stories, however, she seemed like an ordinary, non-magical cat who just happened to be hanging around a different human or two.

I'd say that I really enjoyed the stories in about half the volume and felt so-so about or slightly disliked the stories in the other half. The stories I liked the least tended to be ones that felt somewhat pointless, such as the second story, in which Milkyway traveled with the Star Traveler. The artwork was beautiful, no doubt, but the story didn't grab me at all. Same with the story (which I don't think had enough to it to qualify as a story) about Milkyway's first owner/traveling partner, a shepherd. Then there was the story about the robotic cat, which started out fabulously (I loved the cat's creepy-cute attempt to imitate a real cat's cuteness) and then stumbled into an ending that was a weird mix of tragic and happy. It felt like Sirial couldn't quite bear to commit to a tragic ending, but had already gone too far to bring it back to something happier.

I absolutely loved the story about the 15-year-old shoemaker and 15-year-old gisaeng, even though I knew intellectually that their budding romance probably wouldn't turn out well. Although the interlude was a bit odd, set in a sort of alternate universe convenience store featuring all the characters from the previous stories, I liked that it gave the shoemaker and the gisaeng the kind of life that would allow them to go on an adorable first date.

There were quite a few cute stories: the awkward, shy boy who Milkyway taught to play cello (one of those things you just have to accept, and try not to think about too hard); the two broke guys who ended up trapped because they couldn't bear to step out the door over a sleeping Milkyway, in case they accidentally woke her up; and the cat who desperately wanted to give his human a gift but had no clue what sorts of things humans like (hint: dead bugs don't make good gifts). I liked that Sirial didn't go 100% for the “cats are standoffish” stereotype.

The story that seemed to fit the volume the least was the one about the cruel king, the awesome lady knight, and the white “animal” the king sent the knight to find. It had the least connection to Milkyway, and it was the closest Sirial came to writing something truly dark, with people dying and getting body parts lopped off. And even then, Sirial kept coming back to those characters and trying to write them a happier alternate life.

I'm still debating whether to buy the second volume or just check it out from the library.

Additional Comments:

I can't believe I almost forgot to mention this. For those sensitive about cat deaths: one story includes a cat that dies as a result of being hit by a car. It comes back as a ghost in order to try to comfort the person who attempted to help it.

Rating Note:

If I could rate the artwork and the stories separately, I'd give the stories either 3 or 3.5 stars and the artwork 5 stars (or 4.75, since the artwork was a bit confusing in one story and since I mistook the sheep in another story for cattle). My compromise was 4 stars.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

I really wanted to like this manhwa. It has a cute guy, cute girl, cute cat...another cute cat...another cute cat...

wait, this story is basically about cats. And the two people that come together to take care of them.

While I love the illustrations by Yohan, I felt like there was nothing going on but feeding cats!