The Death Mage Who Doesn’t Want a Fourth Time Chapter 279 Discussion

Dude I'm gonna be real, this story is f*cking weird.

I've been reading it on and off for years since it was one of my first ever novels. But trying to check it out again just makes me realize how weird and dry it can be.

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It's got uncomfortable moments like the main character (a child) getting asked if they want to have a kid by other characters (Who are not children, and oh boy does this happen a lot iirc)

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The chapters are laboriously long, honestly I can't help but feel for the translators. But at the same time this length doesn't mean more substance, it means regurgitating things over and over until they become paragraphs when they could and should just be sentences. Like I get it, world building is great. I love it. But when I finish a chapter and can summarize what happened in about two sentences despite having read what could be 3 chapters of other novels it gets a little tiring.

The power scaling is also wild, like to go too deep into it would be spoilers but it's to the point that each time his stat screen gets longer I get less and less interested in caring.

Spoiler

Hell half the stuff in it barely gets mentioned or feels like it has any relevance, it just exists there so that you can look at it and justify to yourself why it's okay that he can one-shot Gods.

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And oh boy the side characters. Lord forbid you take a hiatus from reading cause if so then get prepared to meet your new best friend, the Wiki. There are so many damn side characters and so many of them are only relevant for their related arc. Beyond that you could honestly just replace the whole 'Privel said' part with 'Levia said' and it'd make no difference due to the characters having almost no defining personality traits besides awooga child MC and then whatever race they are. (It's like we're collecting a damn Pokedex at this point)

It does have a fantastic translation team and from what I can remember a very interesting start but like is it really worth it man. It's got cartoonishly evil villains, flat side characters, a stat screen written by an inflation fetishist and about half its character count is dedicated to oohing and aahing about cooking—the other 49% is about the classic trope of inventing modern things in a fantasy world. That 1%? That's the actual fights you look forward to—but they're so far and few between and usually over just as fast.

There's probably way more to talk about but the novels checked me out waaay too long ago for me to remember. Honestly look around a little more if you're tempted to read this, there's some great stories out there that'll leave you with positive thoughts when you think back on them, not this.