- #1
I really enjoy the female lead. Her journey and growth is very appealing. And dealing with the scheming, the politics, and the verbal jousts are all interesting. The characters in general are well-grounded and the action sequences are gripping and suspenseful. The problem I have is with the romance.The male lead is a predator. It's even written down in their internal monologues about how he is hunting her. How he is a big bad wolf and she is a little fox. He manipulates her, stalks her, ab*ses his authority to get close to her time and again and she eventually trusts him inexplicably [it's handwaved off as them fighting as soldiers together in life-and-death situations]. But none of his advances were actually reciprocated. Nothing is done consensually. He just keeps pushing her boundaries and pressing her buttons (which, I admit, *could* be a good thing if it's useful as a catalyst to overcome personal but here it's definitely not).He doesn't respect her autonomy whatsoever. And her autonomy and ability to handle dangers in life by herself is her number one motivator in becoming a soldier. So it's really a puzzle to me why she would ever want to be close to him. To be fair, she constantly rebuffs him, considering him a "dangerous man, " and tries to run away from him. It's just... he never gives up.So to sum up the romance: he stalks her, manipulates her, and constantly crosses her bottom line. Adding onto this their age difference (14 vs 20 at the start) and the whole thing really becomes quite repulsive. I thought as time went on he'd eventually realize her idiosyncrasies and become more kind to her so that she could trust him back. But no. It was just more ambiguous flirting in inappropriate situations.I've come near the end of the translated chapters so I'm going to drop this and not look back. It's really a shame since I enjoyed her character growth quite a lot. What a pity.
