Shachar Haad

This was a good story for the first 50% of the book, and then the author realized he wanted a harem and smut, so the events and characters took a backseat to meaningless fan service and very odd behavior from all the people involved.

The story stopped making sense, the decisions made were nonsensical, and the overall tone shifted to something resembling a softcore porn film plot, where the events are manipulated to create the next sex scene.

To delve a bit deeper:

There is a conspiracy afoot. The king is trying to get rid of his daughter, the legitimate ruler, just before her coronation, with the only one who can stop it is the protagonist, who, in this magical world, possesses a power of premonition in the form of a repeated dreams -- and during the first half of the book, it was interesting, believable (for the most part) and created the ground for a very compelling story.

The MC manages to save the princess by staying behind, killing the ones who chase after her, and then is arrested and brought in to be tortured by those who think he killed the princess, apart from the very top officials, who seek to make him a scapegoat to hide their treachery; the beginning of a thrilling story.

However, since around the 50% mark, the characters started making silly decisions, like the MC going to his childhood home, where the authorities, who now believe he killed the princess, would be looking for him; he makes that decision for no conceivable reason apart from the need to "recruit" the first harem member.

Then, we get a long and tedious exposition about the traveling companion: the sword he received from the princess when he chose to stay behind, only to find that it's a magical sword that can turn into a young woman (because this is a harem story). That story is told in a very odd and lengthy way. Then some suggestive scenes take place, which fills the lore of this world with nonsense: the woman, while being a sword killed some tainted enemies, so she is now tainted herself, and the only way to remove that taint is for the MC to 'brush' that taint off of her skin. All of her skin. Why can't she do it herself? For very smutty reasons.

Jumping forward, they encounter the MC's love interest (the first one who he has been pining over for years) and the sex scene starts 30 seconds after their meeting after they were apart for a long time and her knowing he is being chased. Do they first go to a safe location, like their village? No. Do they talk about everything that has been going on? Don't be silly.

After the sex, we are greeted with a long exposition about tribal dogma and how the MC is expected to create the harem. He doesn't need to be the one who suggests it; he doesn't need to be the one to find the solution to establish his harem; he is forced into it.

On and on, the silliness continues. There are repetitions, the MC not getting what people are saying to him, for the benefit of them needing to expend on the same things over and over, so the most oblivious reader might understand -- but all they manage to do is make the MC look like a dribbling idiot.

The story has contrivances, deus ex machina, and every interaction goes for the benefit of the MC and what he wants to do. Most of it seems to be the result of poor planning and wasting time on smut instead of developing the story so that conversations and events make sense.

Dropped the book at around 30%.

Instead of telling a compelling story with compelling characters and compelling events, the author decided to tell the reader about their latest RPG session in which the character goes to place X, talks with NPC Y, who gives him quest Z. Now, you need to read all the tactics that the character used to win the battle, to return to the questgiver, so he can receive the next quest in that questline (which will likely be as tedious as the one he just did).

I learned nothing about the world, the character, the conflicts, or the events. Just long descriptions of battles and their tactics, with some repetition about the MC's infatuation with his traveling companion (and vice versa).

I enjoyed the book, apart from some caveats, and am excited to read the following one. The story flowed well, and I didn't experience it standing still or being dragged along. The characters were memorable and likable. The plot barely exists, making the story more of a "Slice of Life" where you focus on the characters, settings, and worldbuilding.

There are a few elements where the story fails:

1. The protagonist is presented as too dumb for the supposed benefit of the reader. It's as if the author thought very little about the reader's capacity to understand nuance and clear connections in the story, forcing the protagonist to ask questions repeatedly and assuming they couldn't understand anything from context in the story. This made him look dumb, more than a person who lacks information about the world he is in.
2. There is way too much exposition at the start of the book. It would have been fine if it were to have been spread over various conversations and locations, but the author focused on one long, and sometimes a bit tedious, conversation that exposits information not yet relevant to the story. The protagonist doesn't see or experience events, and then another character explains their meaning after a context is established. The latter part does happen later, but as mentioned above, only for mostly self-explanatory names, events, and places.
3. The protagonist is placed in a school filled with women. He needs a roommate. So, to make it simple, he is paired up with a lesbian. I liked that pairing. It can answer the problem of mixed gender cohabitate and it opens the story to a male/female relationship without the option of romantic entanglement. Unfortunately, this is not what was done here. The woman is a lesbian to the point where it's convenient, becoming bi, and it's not.

Sam wants to be added to Noah's family; there is a reason for that, and in context, it works with the worldbuilding. The problem, she is a lesbian, and the process to be 'added' requires sexual activity. The story leads to the point of doing it that one time for the benefit of the ritual, but as the story progresses, all illusions are removed, and the sexual tension between a man and a lesbian becomes silly and then ridiculous when faced with the enjoyment the lesbian has with this straight sexual encounter, compounded by lust afterwards, where the lesbian can't get enough and willingly jumps to more sexual encounters.

This would have made sense if the story had made her realize she was bisexual throughout the story, setting the stage to reach that point. While I'm not a lesbian or a woman (which seems to be a requirement to becoming a lesbian), I have a hard time accepting that this is how lesbianism works, which takes away from the story.

TL;DR: very convoluted story where the characters are forced to take actions due to plot contrivance.

Character actions: Most actions characters take don't make sense, such as an assassin who's prosecuted volunteering to go to an organization that exists to hunt and kill every assassin on the continent. Or a plot about a group of people trying to access a place through the most convoluted and ridiculous plan that is utterly pointless from the start and that could have been resolved straightforwardly.

Death: The story also relies on death for the sake of portraying death with no emotional weight behind it, serving as either motivation for a character (in the most basic and boring way) or for making the story ‘mature' and “having stakes” rather than the death having meaning in the story.

The world races: The difference between the two primary races in this world boils down to outward appearance and minor innate racial characteristics that are relevant based on the need of the story. No cultural or behavioral difference is mentioned or tied back to the plot at any point.

Shock value: Apart from deaths, some scenes seem to be written to evoke an emotional reaction and create stakes without impacting either story or characters outside of an immediate plot point being conveyed. It also goes back to why characters behave the way they do, which is left unresolved.

Plot: The plot just ends. There isn't any conclusion to a plotline or an understanding of what everything leads up to, apart from telling the reader about a villain's resurrection that was so hamfisted and plot-breaking that it conveyed no emotion. Even before the ending, most of the story is very limited in its plot, and most of the time, characters are doing stuff to do stuff; rather than following any throughline (this also goes back to character actions mentioned previously).

Fight Scenes: Although the fight scenes were functional and engaging, most end when the losing side is decapitated, slashed in half, or otherwise ridiculously injured, making their death immediate. The author's blurb about him being first and foremost a fan of Sci-Fi explains this phenomenon as most swords behave like lightsabers, and no one is holding any melee weapon other than a sword.

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There are some positives, such as a complex plot that consists of several moving parts and an intricate political structure. Unfortunately, in this case, the bad outweighs the good.