The Shadow's Child is now an herbalist who ekes out a living in the Scattered Pearls Belt, brewing medicinal teas to help travelers cope with the unreality of deep spaces.

[1] The Tea Master and the Detective is the third standalone novella to be published in de Bodard's Xuya Universe, after On a Red Station, Drifting (2012) and The Citadel of Weeping Pearls (2015).

[2] Writing for the New York Times, author Amal El-Mohtar states that "this isn’t a tidy transposition of Holmes and Watson into far-future space, for all that the elements of homage ... shine through."

El-Mohtar praised the work as "a window onto a beautifully developed world that widens the meaning of space opera", writing that it integrates Chinese and Vietnamese cultures instead of Western military conventions.

[3] Library Journal gave the novella a starred review, calling it a "slim volume [that] packs a visceral punch" and "an imaginative read".

[4] Writing for Locus, Liz Bourke stated that the novella "preserves the empathy and the intensity of the original Sherlockian stories, while being told in de Bodard’s cut-glass prose and inimitable modern style".