- #1
I like wish fulfillment type stories with violent overpowered main characters, so I think it's pretty fun so far.But I agree with the reviews that say it overdoes trying to make the MC seem super cool and "respectably" violent using other characters' perspectives. Especially because we as readers can see for ourselves that he's excessive. One reason it feels like that is that I also agree that there's not enough emotional appeal for/payoff from the various mu*ders. A visual medium can get away with that lack more, but this is a novel.The people the MC befriends are often more offensive than the MC's hair trigger mu*ders. Multiple times hunters do disgusting things and, instead of killing them, the MC says they're "good guys."Spoiler
- One of the MC's team is an 18 year old girl whose uncle financially and physically ab*sed her. She had already signed a contract with the MC and turned down other guilds in person. A guild contacts the uncle and signs a contract on behalf of the girl, apparently planning to give the money to the uncle instead of her. They're well aware that the niece already turned them down and that her uncle will ab*se her to get her agreement (if they even care about that, they went around her on purpose). The MC later meets them and says they're "good guys" and he likes them. To me, enabling or rewarding child ab*sers is a hard red line. Anyone who does that is absolutely not "good." These are people the MC should be killing. Especially because they crossed one of his lines and messed with "his person."
- A very dangerous gate appears in London which will burst in 3 days and probably wipe most of the UK off the map. A female hunter contacts various hunters worldwide to request help. The strongest hunter in the world tells her, in front of government officials, that he'll only help if she has s*x with him. She says no and he says to contact him when she realizes she has no other options, but that since she rejected him once, he "won't be gentle." He continues to sexually harass her every time he appears. The MC's brother says that he's a trustworthy "good guy." He even asks this near-rapist to bodyguard the woman immediately after this while minimizing and excusing his behavior as "flirting." When the MC meets him, he agrees he's a "good guy" and he likes him. This is a person I'd like to see the MC kill, not befriend.
While it might seem at the beginning like the MC mu*ders a team leader out of sympathy/affection for a woman, that's incorrect and clarified later. He does it because the guy "used" the MC to harass her, not because he harassed her. He doesn't kill people because they're scum, but instead because they cross one of his arbitrary lines.
[collapse]It feels like the author of this didn't quite commit to the MC being an anti-hero protagonist or an evil protagonist, but instead tried to walk some line between the two that doesn't completely work for me.Speaking of which, it's not that I'm particularly squeamish. I enjoy the thrill of a fictional character being able to do anything to anyone and get away with it. For example, Leylin from Warlock of Magus World or Gu Changge from I'm the Fated Villain. (I even think the author made Changge too soft with women!) But these are explicitly bad men with little or no pretensions to any kind of honor or virtue. Men who are usually admired because they fool people and otherwise never called good. Nor do they call others good because they respect them as fellow villains.BTW, repeat after me. Having "a setting" is not the same as having "world-building." A setting is a basic, world-building is advanced. You probably mean "the setting" not "the world-building."