Kuro no Maou Chapter 260 Discussion

This is a brutal tale. A savage, twisted tale. But I love it. I love it so much that I have difficulty seeing why I enjoy it.

Let me try to translate my feelings into text.

Kuro no Maou's protagonist is the foundation. He keeps me reading. I was surprised to see there are some changes in his personality as the series progresses (character development, my old friend, it's been too long!). The novel presents him in his times of joy and his times of despair. Some readers might be irritated by him, but I'm sympathetic toward him. Perhaps it's because I've read too many xianhuans. Those novels rarely have protagonists with more depth than a pond, and they're like characters frozen in time - their personalities are never affected by the events that occur around them.

I enjoy that there's a clear antagonist. The threat it presents the protagonist is frequently reminded, and enemies are often shown as more than just a bunch of nameless peasants served on a silver platter for the protagonist to dominate. Some are shown to be just as human as the main characters.

The romance adds a lot to the series. I'll leave it at that and leave you to discover the insanity. In any case, I enjoyed it.

I have three reasons for not rating this 5/5. The first is that the series has some really gruesome scenes. Despite having read so many other novels with descriptions of cruelty, I can't help but feel disgusted while reading them. This novel is absolutely not for the faint-hearted.

The second reason is that the novel slows down greatly at some points, not just in terms of action, but plot. Some people think the politics and scheming is boring, but even worse is when barely anything is happening. Most of such speed-bumps contain a lot of comedy, but most of the series' jokes missed their mark for me.

The third reason is one that bothered me for a while. The author (not translators) frequently changes the point of view and tense like they're nothing. I've seen the tense change from past to present in a single paragraph. The first person point-of-view can be confusing if you aren't aware that it sometimes changes later in the story to be in the perspective of the heroines. It bothered me even a hundred chapters into the series, though now (at 260) it's just an inconvenience.

I like the novel, but its torture and gore (the scenes aren't frequent, but they do exist) might be too much for many. Even I thought the beginning is slow, but now I greatly enjoy the series.

Note: The quality of the translation is decent (grammar and spelling errors are frequent but the meaning is easy to catch), but infrequently the sentences require a bit of artistic work on the side of the reader to decipher.