A Hundred Ways To Kill A Heartthrob Chapter 90 Discussion

Five stars though I'm just two and a half arcs in, just on the strength of the first arc alone, which long enough to be a standalone story, and absolutely tremendous. Very well written, with plenty of unexpected twists and turns, and my sympathy constantly shifting from one character to the other. It reads like pure tragedy, not the sort that tries to make you sad and cry, it's not weepy melodrama, more like a grand bleak story with larger than life characters all fated for doom.

This is QT of sorts, as the MC moves through endless reincarnation cycles as punishment, and the only way to escape each world is to get the ML to fall in love with him and then kill the ML. Tragedy guaranteed. But it somehow magically stays free of melodrama due to the character of the MC, he's your cold and aloof type, very world weary, but much more interestingly, he is hiding some real rage and revulsion underneath, he seems to find love and his love targets pretty disgusting and pathetic.

He's also quite mysterious, we see his actions but often his thought process is hidden, so I often ended up wondering why he did some things, as they didn't seem to help towards his goal at all, at least not at first glance. He's such a passive character too, he does so little, and I'm never very sure if he has any control of the story, which oddly makes him even more interesting. I can't tell if he's a master manipulator, or he's just trying to survive the situation he's in.

Apart from the MC we get two more, almost always equally prominent characters, who I guess are the ML, often equally as cold and aloof as the MC, and the yandere psycho villain, but their roles often switch, and who is good or evil and who loves whom changes all the time.

Spoiler

My guess would be that one represents the original villain, that tried to force the MC back in his original world and is the reason for the MC's predicament, while the other is some sort of ML love interest from the original world? Good luck to you ML, your MC does not seem one for romance

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After the excellent first arc, the second was a bit of a let down, as rather too similar to the first arc and a bit more formulaic.

Spoiler

Both are in a similar pseudohistorical setting, and while in the first arc the MC is a simple and fairly ugly servant, which makes his task to get the emperor to love him all the more challenging, now he's an impossibly beautiful omega-type creature, which is a lot more boring. He also is way too passive in this arc, to the point that he becomes almost a secondary character, and the villain takes centre stage and becomes the most sympathetic one

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The third arc is interesting enough up to now, I'm not loving the set up, but I can't predict how the plot will develop which is a good sign. Obviously there's a long way to go to the final arc, and all the original ideas might lead to a cliche conclusion, but at this point this gets a thumbs up for suspense, originality, and some fascinating characters.