I very much enjoyed the first Beware of Chicken book. While it started as a usual isekai of someone’s soul getting trapped in someone else’s body (there was room, that person had just died), it turned into an amusing parody/send up of the genre. Jin Rou didn’t want to be part of the struggle and greed of being a cultivator, striving to reach the heavens at the expense of smashing everything else down. Instead he arguably went in the opposite direction. He started up a farm, put down roots, got married and made a family.

A big family as well. Because as a possible side effect of his chi-based farming approach various members of his farm started awakening their powers and becoming Cultivators. These included his wife, her sort of adopted brothers and various farm animals, including the titular chicken, two pigs, a cat, a rat and a fish. And in a lot of ways it’s these characters that the second book is about.

I’ll be honest, I’m very happy at the change in focus. Watching Jin Rou build a farm, slowly come to the realisation that various members of his farm were Cultivators (he got the message when they presented him with the scattered swords of the bandits that were going to attack him) and slowly woo his wife, while just ambling about unaware that he was actually pretty powerful and solving problems he wasn’t even aware of was fun but it was also a plot that was done. Beware of Chicken 1 could have been a standalone novel and it didn’t really cry out for a sequel, though it did leave itself open for one. Jin is a simple man who purposefully moved himself as far from the call to adventure as possible. Now that he’s settled he’s not really main character material.

What he is though is an excellent base and one that the second novel builds nicely upon. Because while he doesn’t particularly want to be a cultivator, his ‘disciples’ do. They have been handed both power and the ability to use it and seeing what they decide to do with said power is what makes this second book fascinating.

The Bi De, the chicken, who has tried in the past to follow the ‘traditional’ cultivator path of consuming pills and hoarding his power and found the limits of it pretty quickly is now looking to follow his own interests and find out what is beyond the boundaries of Fa Ram. In fact journeys are the main theme running through this book. Do you go out into the wider world or do you stay at home? Both are valid answers, as the book shows, it just depends upon the individual. And some travel to the Fa Ram instead. Xiulan, who stumbled upon the farm by mistake in the last book, has come back to learn. And in some ways to heal, as she’s affected by what happened during the hunt for Sun Ken.

I’d also like to highlight some fantastic ‘show don’t tell’ writing here. Both she and Tigu have regular spars, though they also both have their own demons that they’re contending with. In their first match there’s this wonderful passage: ‘In one exchange, a leaf fell between them, floating between slashing claws and spinning swords. It touched the ground unmolested, not even the air disturbed along its passing.’ In a later one though a similar exchange is described like this: ‘Two forms blurred through the night, cutting across the forest like dervishes. A foot hit the ground hard enough to leave a mark. Claws dug into bark hard enough to scar. A leaf floated through the air, where it was split in two from an errant strike.’ This is such a cool way to show how their worsening mental states. Really top notch writing.

Which sums this whole book up nicely, really. Yes, it’s a parody and a bit of a joke. But it is written superbly, plotted well and all in all was just a joy to read. So come for the jokes and stay for the interesting and well-crafted story.