- #1
tldr; good story, bad smut, meh characters. I do not recommend this novel at the time of writing and the current number of translated chapters (at 135), return when there's at least 250 or 300 chapters.If you're like me, who has extensive experience with smut, from published books to games, then you might not enjoy this one.The City of Witches is a good example of a well-written story bogged down by its terribly-written smut. You may say it's due to the translator, but I'd give it a good 50/50.For the author, the smut is written early on with no real emotional core, which made it an utter chore to read simply because it didn't offer anything of substance, it existed simply to exist. If the author wanted to show how terrible these witches treat the main character, they could've easily put a 'fade to black' instead of stopping the story (For a lot of chapters, I should add) for cheap smut. Many of these scenes outstay their welcome, and many are bland and unimaginative.For the translator, I'd say the smut is translated terribly. It doesn't evoke a sense of imagery or arousal that smut should do. I get it, as a fellow writer, writing emotions is very hard, much like horror and comedy, smut requires a very specific set of skills to write and/or translate properly. There should be a level of 'sticky lust' to every word, a hanging tension nearly snapping at every sentence; sad to say, the translator isn't all that skilled at portraying this emotion to english.With that out of the way, I'll talk about the story and character. Not to spoil too much, but the plot is good. There are many twists and turns that change the dynamics of the story and characters, and the author isn't afraid of changing the status quo. The plot is the highlight here.That said, and I hope this is rectified by further chapters, the characters are... decent. The main character is a standout; written with his own flaws and contradictions, but the rest are tropey at best, derivative and reductive at worst.