- #1
The novel starts out really fun and addictive, but by volume 5, it just keeps getting worse and worse. Every side-plot the author conceived is contrived nonsense built on the most putrid vein of wish fulfillment.The good is the OP is somewhat good OP with the protagonist earning his power based on hard work, effort and talent. The early development of the story is rather interesting and a lot of it makes sense.It's not classy, it's not particularly well written, it doesn't have deep characters, it's cliche, but in the end, It's pretty damned fun. This is Twilight for men. If they ever made a movie series about it, I'm sure there'd be countless people pointing out all the s*upid author choices.The protagonist does get on your nerves later on in the series. As the harem advances, the author starts jumping through enormous hoops to avoid the protagonist actually having any real s*xual contact. Ridiculous leaps in logic are used to keep the "dense protagonist" personality going. I found I only really got turned off around volume 5. So that's a pretty good amount of reading before this story really started pissing me off.This is used as a prop for a comedy routine the author implements in the story line, but it falls flat because of how cliche and forced the whole thing is.The protagonist himself doesn't have a real reason to refuse the harem either. He's stated multiple times that he wants to start a harem. His excuses range from "I don't want to be told what to do." to "the girl has a flawed personality." to "she's dresses too flashy."This novel is well beyond the point of a "dense protagonist". This is a literal "delusional protagonist.For example, the protagonist believes he's an evil overlord because he raises taxes, meanwhile, his people will cheer and outright state they're happy because he's doing it for a demonstrably good cause. The protagonist doesn't understand this, so he decides to improve their education as punishment to help them better understand how evil he is. This sort of thing happens regularly.The protagonists harem situation is ridiculously frustrating. Because of the protagonists talents and position as an aristocrat, he's constantly being asked to produce an heir with one of the many MANY woman that are interested in doing just that. And he doesn't. He's surrounded himself in beautiful woman who want him, and is begged by everyone around to breed, yet he doesn't. There's an incredibly shallow reason from his past life that's given for it, but it makes no sense in reality.I kinda get the feeling that this story is the author trying to explain his own political beliefs. There are various moments where Liam stops to explain why he does things how he does them and it's very clear that this is what the author thinks. It's not to a heavy extent, and it may be that the author doesn't even realize he's doing it. It's actually really easy to let your own politics seep into a novel you're writing.