Margrave’s Bastard Son was The Emperor Chapter 476 Discussion

It's good, but not the best. Some Korean reviews saying it gets worse in the middle is not lying.

The first 200 or so chapters were great. The pacing is good, and there are clear motivations, conflicts, resolutions, and compelling characters throughout.

Afterwards, however, the pacing gets disrupted, almost like a slice of life filler, and the things aren't clear anymore. The protagonist isn't running towards a goal anymore, but just moving, goals unknown to both his surroundings and the readers. Developments are seemingly revealed as if stumbling across instead of trudging towards the unpaved destination. After that the pace picks up again but the storytelling is still as revelations + some surprise events.

For these kinds of novels that start with a bang--the reincarnation mystery + surrounding circumstances for example--losing sight of that just feels boring. I'm not interested in how the current empire is going to be run. I'm only interested in what the mystery surrounding the protagonist is, and how he will move towards his own goals in a different spacetime and deal with his current connections now, some forged by his very own hands, and his lack of connections then.

• prologue + 1st arc -- excellent
• 2nd arc -- ok (badly needs character development, some characters gone not mentioned, storytelling not ideal, world expanded but restricted to 3 bigger kingdoms, lack of details for the rest of the world)
• 3rd arcpending...
• ...

In conclusion, I would recommend reading it at least up until the first arc after the prologue ends, as in up until the succession wars are concluded. Up until this part it would be an 'excellent' rating (not the best but absolutely worth your time).

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P.S.

One minor quip I have is that in dialogues, the author makes what I believe to be a mistake, in writing style. It's one thing to try and put accents into dialogue, which could be good or bad; it's another thing to put in name elongations. "Iaaannn" is not what you want to put into dialogue. I believe that would be too far in any published setting, yet it shows up here because it's an online novel.