I don't even know where to start. Some other reviewers here were able to perfectly summarize Word of Honor: it may not really be a 9.5 rate if you want to be super rational about it BUT you just fall in love with the series and its characters: it's funny, warm, full of charm, intriguing, dramatic (without falling to much on the melodramatic), swoon-worthy (as my Netflix likes to say) and yeah, you just want to spend time with those characters and know more about them.

I have not read the novel by Priest (yet!) so I can’t really say what was on the source material and what was brought to the story by the screenwriter, but I find that the product that we got has a great balance between tender moments and action, plot and character development.

I am a huge fan fantasy/wuxia and BL and I find that these two genres separately tend to sometimes be a bit flawed on either the building of the relationships between characters (and I don’t just mean romantic relationships, specially not the romantic ones actually), character development or plot development… It always feel we need to sacrifice one of the three for some reason… Word of Honor did not suffer from this problem, it delivered a well-constructed world and tight storyline with multi-faceted characters and evolving relationships (Wen Ke Xing and Gu Xiang, Zhou Zi Shu and Cheng Ling, Gu Xiang and Cao Wei Ning and, of course, Wen Ke Xing and Zhou Zi Shu).

The plot itself was conventional in terms that it was one of those ‘we need to get and/or destroy a magical item’ but I felt that Wen Ke Xing and Zhou Zi Shu views towards the martial arts world and the quest for more power made the story seem different from the Wuxia I watched in the past.

I found the last five or so episodes felt a bit rushed and some plot points and developments could have been more thoroughly explained (they wanted to keep some information from the audience and I thought that they ended up cutting scenes that were important to the plot).

About characters (the most important factor in any story in my humble opinion):

I just loved all the dynamics (because, yes in this kind of story we do need the characters we love to hate too) and I loved our protagonists, especially Wen Ke Xing. He was my personal favourite, his tones of grey, his charm and personality. Everything about him was just the right amount, definitely one of my favourite characters of all time (and the reasons I really want to read Faraway Wanderers so badly).

I also loved Gu Xiang, Zhou Zi Shu, Cao Wei Ning and the Scorpion King.

Zhou Zi Shu was the perfect match to Wen Ke Xing, a contrast and yet a complement to his personality. I loved the way he dealt with his past and how his character developed through the series, rediscovering reasons to live.

Gu Xiang was adorable and funny and innocent and loyal… A great character especially considering what we normally get in the BL world. Hers and Cao Wei Ning relationship made me go ‘ownnnnnn’ many, many times.
As for the scorpion king… that unpredictable bast***… I kept wanting him to be happy in spite all… yet, got invested in his story.

And, of course, my favourite of all things was Zhou Zi Shu and Wen Ke Xing’s relationship. Just the right amount of banter, tenderness, companionship and understanding. I like the way their relationship evolved, how they learned to cherish and trust one another…

I really love when we get a couple that is equal in all senses, that one helps the other, that there is no side that seems ‘dominant’, both stand on equal footing and have a life, a backstory and interest outside the relationship… When one character does not need to change for the other, it is the other that has to learn to accept their lovers faults and flaws. So, yeah, I love this couple!

Did I want a kiss? Yeah, I did (even knowing that we would not get it… but, admit it, we were all pretty amazed to how many tender moments we were able to get!) but I was genuinely happy with the portrait of their relationship as a whole.

I do hope we get more series like this ?