- #1
Sick of seeing reviews at 3 chapters read...Anyway, here's my review. First on this site, may do more based on reception. Will also update this as I read more, up until I either drop it or it's completed/dropped by translator (s). Summary at the bottom.This novel really gives me mixed feelings. On one hand, it has an engaging plot, characters that actually behave like, well, living beings, and it has some decent world building (not too much not too little).On the other hand, the actual writing is of poor quality, ruining the potential that Hakai no Miko carries.It's like some fifteen year old came up with a great story, but as (s) he's fifteen, he lacks the writing experience necessary to properly convey this great tale he's come up with.The foreshadowing is terrible, as it reveals not just future events but also the general direction that Hakai no Miko will take, ruining the potential build-up of the story. It's like the author got overly excited about his own story and wanted to show off how "epic" it is, only to then ruin it with these teases of this "epic" tale.The dialogue is unnatural, and doesn't really flow well. A lot of the characters' dialogue feels rather forced, the same can be said for the paragraphs that describe the thoughts of said characters.And most noticeably, the descriptions. While I can't say with any certainty it's entirely the author that's at fault here, it seems quite likely considering the overall poor writing of the novel that clearly is not a result of the translator (s). There's loads of short and simple adjectives used to describe things, with these descriptions often being unnecessarily lengthy and sometimes even redundant. Many of the descriptors aren't placed well either, disrupting the flow (and for myself, immersion) of the novel. A brief example of this poor writing would be: Spoiler
... yelled at a suspiciously acting young warrior who seems to harbour feelings of guilt in his heart. (Chapter 12)
[collapse]The description of guilt in his heart doesn't even make sense, as from the perspective of the first character, there's nothing written to show that he can see something that makes this character look guilty. Nothing like a downcast face, or blatant hesitation. That's just focusing on a small part of the sentence, the entire thing is poorly done.Overall, my opinion towards this novel is the following:Currently, I can't recommend it. If the author's writing skills pick up in the future chapters, or the LN gets translated and shows experienced writing, then I think I'll then be able to confidently recommend this as a great novel. Until then, it's just wasted potential. In saying that, if you can tolerate poor writing skills (I'm sure most of you can, given the amount of MTL and overall bad novels), give it a go. You may like it. Just don't expect something amazing.