- #1
I had seen some colored illustrations of the novel which reminded me of so-bin's Overlord in style, so considering the premise, I had really high expectations for the novel... They were easily broken though. When I saw the black and white illustrations I felt betrayed, as the humanoid characters, besides Lorraine (the heroine), aren't exactly great...So, what's the story about? If you were expecting something Dark considering the title, go away. It may have looked like that at first, but I would rebrand it as "The Undead Adventurer and the Charming Researcher: Just marry already!".So, MC is some weak ass adventurer with extremely low self-esteem. He dies by the dragon and wakes up as an Undead Skeleton. Aeons pass by, all his acquaintances are dead, he survives the harsh dungeon as a weak skeleton slowly climbing to the surface... He wakes up as a Skeleton, he is even weaker, fights other monsters and is slowly evolving in monster ranks, saves a girl adventurer who helps him to get out of the dungeon, then MC goes straight to his friend to get some help. I think from the moment he left the city, died, reincarnated, evolved, met the random girl, got out and was able to get inside the city, a matter of about 10 days went by... Seriously. Oh, and his low self-esteem? That's only personal, everyone in the city knows that although weak, he is a great and very prudent person who helps newbies and is a veteran of sorts.And there goes everything that could be considered "dark story".The heroine is a very competent magician who is also a genius researcher, they met because MC taught her a bunch about how to behave in the past, and she got attached to him... I guess... As friends, of course... Both characters are very dense, but work well together, because she is interesting, the MC is not.The story is very slow... It doesn't help that there is a lot of filler to fill in pages, each volume has between 4 and 6 chapters, and boy they could be shortened by a lot, that's how slow the story is.And then there is repeatability... You see, if you ever took the novel in hand after a long time and couldn't remember what was the base premise of the story (weak MC is killed by dragon, turns undead, returns to city and everything follows up), do not worry, the same story is repeated, with details, in almost every volume (in one volume, it's 2 times!). The protagonist is going to do something? Let's fill it with as many characters (as in letters) as possible to make the novel longer, let's fill it with random conversations, let's also detail a bunch of random stuff, and repeat that as much as possible in case the reader forgot it from the previous chapter... Oh, the volume ended with MC deciding to go to a certain place and has to prepare before that? Let's make a whole volume with that preparation...The premium extra stories... I could always care for them from other novels I read, because they seemed to complete, or add to the main story in some way... These ones however are filler, with MC and heroine doing good deeds, and being rewarded and praised for being good matured, and the new character made just for the short story learns a lesson, or is just shown to be good natured because he is MC's friend, and so on.Now, I'm not going to say that this novel is not for anyone, maybe younger people would like it, it has many cliches and is quite generic, but I guess I can say that because I have read many novels with those cliches, but someone who hasn't experienced it may like it.I was able to stand reading the 7 volumes, and am curious about the cliffhanger, because it seems the plot is starting to move into a sub-climax of sorts (8 VOLUMES IN!)... But do I regret having started this novel? Yeah, I guess I do, it has been just good enough to make me not drop it, but it was uninteresting enough that I hardly felt the urge to continue reading...
However, here are a few things that this novel does not have (And by that I don't mean it as bad, just that it may be easy to misunderstand and expect them due to the type of story) :
However, here are a few things that this novel does not have (And by that I don't mean it as bad, just that it may be easy to misunderstand and expect them due to the type of story) :
- Harem - Lorraine and MC are a pair, and nobody gets between them.
- Overpowered MC - Although he gets stronger as he evolves now, he can still be considered weak compared to strong people. Strength is far from being his defining character.
- Anti-Hero Protagonist - He is the very definition of cliche protagonist, if anything is to be saved, is that he is not hot blooded, because he knows the harshness of the world.
- Betrayal - Everyone is MC's friend. Let me repeat it: Every single relevant person in the damn city knows MC and wants him well, even if they don't know his secret.
- Monstrous Appearance - That's the case at first, but it doesn't take that long to get the expected "human form" that makes him look the same as he was, and so everything goes back to how it was before, just, he got new extras.
