A Maiden’s Unwanted Heroic Epic Chapter -- Discussion

This novel falls in to my list of "Why is it so highly rated" novels.

I know that there's going to be some people that prefer what this story is offering, but...

It's a mess. It can't decide what it wants to be, but it doesn't want to be anything good.

It boils down to two major issues, both of them are centered around the main character. The first is that having an MC who has clinically disconnected from reality and only views things in "good for me" or "bad for me" doesn't really make the character truly dynamic or likeable. They *cannot* evolve by definition, and as such they don't have any compelling story arcs to speak of. This means the writer is relying on the reader only enjoying violence for the sake of violence, and not to advance any real story or to develop the main character. This could be resolved with the characters around the MC, but it's not written that way here. I personally see characters written like this for one type of audience: people who think they're special and different in a world full of people just like them. The edginess, the violence without repercussions, the over-powered protagonist who gets exactly what they want not in spite of them being different, but simply because they're different. The world is handed to them because they were born different. It's poor writing.

The second problem is bigger because it represents something that's always bothered me. Our MC has developmental issues. They are NOT mentally capable of thinking like an adult, even if they look like one. And yet the people around her push her in to physical relationships with them. It is disgustingly uncomfortable the way that the MC has relationships with other characters simply because of how simple-minded they are.

Maybe these problems get better later, but... You can't just make a bad story and then ret-con it and say "See, it's good earlier because I wrote some good parts now." If it's bad most of the way through, and the good doesn't fix the bad, then the story is still bad. Who knows though, maybe the author has a really, really, really good explanation for all garbage they spewed. I doubt it though.