- #1
I've read a lot of very bad and questionable BL but very few reminded me so heavily of all the Japanese BL Manga from the 80s, like the (in) famous Zetsuai.There are so many gay couples that, apart from one that you could see as in*est, no one in this novel seems to be straight, and none of the relationships feels organic, believable, or genuine.The novel as a whole can be pretty much filed under (torture) p*rn, it's surely an artform to reach this level of atrocity.Characters aren't questionable or complex, they are evil for evilness sake, neither is there any revenge like the story claimed to be about at the start, it looks more like the author wanted to put every possible s*xual perversion in it.I'm baffled that this is even allowed, especially considering how detailed some of these things are.I can think of countless great bad guys, Moriarty, Hannibal Lecter, Annie Wilkes, even Patrick Bateman, an absolute madman, is a better, more comprehensive and believable villain than any character in this novel.It doesn't even seem like the author put any work into it, the story pretty much crawls from p*rn to p*rn, crime to crime, and that's all there is to it, characters only exist to give her the necessary cast to do so.I was promised a villain but got "mass-produced Anime bad guy", MC has no real motivation for going so overboard with his "revenge", it's not even that he gets actual enjoyment out of it so I could see him as a criminally insane individual – he's obviously indifferent towards the suffering of his victims.It makes everything pointless, shallow, and nonsensical, it's solely for sick personal reasons, either for the author or her targeted audience - sadly it doesn't have the quality that should come with that.Characters change traits and sides faster than a model changes cloths during a runway show, the pure white knight ML turns into an accomplice in only a few chapters, falling as low as the MC, for the MC, for no reason at all.The daughter who is one of the most vile people in the novel, is told to behave like a good girl and every single person is convinced asap, to make it worse, she actually changes in the blink of an eye and wholeheartedly acts like a saint with no transition whatsoever - her character setting collapsed like a poorly built house of cards.No one in this story has any good reason for doing what they do, no one behaves even remotely believable, MC just has to do one thing that can be interpreted as good and everyone takes his side, despite his reputation being as bad as it could possibly be, every sane person would think of him scheming and acting, instead they all believe he was a good guy all along.The cast shares one brain cell, a defective one.Frankly, I have no idea what this novel is supposed to be, or why it even exists.What I personally can't put up with, or want to support in any way, this includes giving a lenient review, is r*pe justified with "it happens to bad people".Spoiler
Two of the "evil" women get sold to human traffickers, r*ped by beasts in front of an audience, and "hopefully" imp**gnated by said beast, so they can give birth to "puppies" and pay back their debts.
[collapse]There are limits, this alone not only crosses them, it bulldozes them, sets them on fire, and sends the ashes to its parents.It's sickening and seriously deranged.Not that I expected anything else, but the "consensual" s*x isn't any better, I no longer have even an ounce of patience for female writers butchering gay s*x until it's unrecognisable, even more so when it, like in this case, would lead to severe injury or even death.Don't write p*rn if you have no idea how it works, ask a gay guy to fact-check it, many of us would gladly do so.To summarize it, it's despicable, borderline illegal torture p*rn, with a nonsensical story and abhorrent, badly crafted characters.