- #1
I rated this novel 3.0 not because I plan on dropping it, but because it is one of the more polarizing novels on my guilty pleasure list.What I liked about it was the sprawling sense of adventure and great mystery that this novel has. If I could excise the central characters from the world and replace them with better ones, well...I have a neutral attitude towards the wish-fulfillment isekai genre but, in general, they miss more than hit. In this case, the novel is too jumbled, in not only setting but tone (fantasy<->scifi, serious<->goofy, etc).The reason why it misses in this case is that Shuuya comes off as a complete self-insert type protagonist. I would rather he be a walking cliche than a complete zero.I choose not to acknowledge his h**ny behavior as being relevant because in this broken novel, he faces virtually no rejection.That leads me to another issue which is the nature of his vampirism. Vampires classically have a natural elegance and charm, so I would forgive the fact that he appears to be irresistible to women post-transmigration. However this author is so determined to self-insert and shill for Japanese betas that he goes out of his way to emphasize how Shuuya has an average and unremarkable Japanese Male's face.So he becomes a vampire who is charming despite appearing average? But subtracting this element from vampires to stroke the jp beta male ego is the least of the offenses.The concept of daywalking vampires has been done before but the way it is depicted here is completely ridiculous. There are no real drawbacks to it at all. If this was a purely comedic wish-fulfillment novel then I wouldn't care. But this is a novel with a moderately serious tone, so to have such OP vampires exist should be an existential threat to the huge mortal/light-aligned kingdoms/Churches/factions.Instead creating an interesting plot element where the protagonist is constantly in fear of being exposed and persecuted, he becomes a well-known, unexamined figure. The contrived manner in which he is bailed out when dealing church officials is so logic-defying that I stopped reading for a while.Once he started making his lovers into bloodkin I stopped caring about the beyond fantastical nature of his harem. I'll just say that the inability to write reasonable relationships between men and women holds back a lot of the authors in this WN/LN space from reaching a higher level.At the end of the day I still read this mess because I want to see if any of the early mysteries which hooked me initially are resolved but this doesn't deserve anything but a light-skimming.