The Conqueror from a Dying Kingdom vol 7 - (read as a prepub) so after the cliffhanger in volume 6, finally I have a resolution and I didn’t expect character development to go into that direction. After volume 5 the series fell off. 3/10
spoiler vol7
MC feel like he regressed years of emotional development and just went on a rampage. He wants to make himself a martyr and aliviate sins that his comrades would bear. All the girls are fawning over him, even though he executes Stalin like tactics by eliminating all his political opponents with most grusoume deaths.
I hope he will get crushed by the crusade
I was shocked by that vol6 cliffhanger (I believe I gave the entire rest of the volume a 2/10 or 3/10 though) and hoped that it would continue strong, but it seems like that’s not the case. It’s a shame, the series really had potential.
I May Be a Guild Receptionist, but I’ll Solo Any Boss to Clock Out on Time - Vol 3
Ugh, the core gimmick to this series has way outstayed its welcome. I get that it is the key to her power, and the main part of her motivation, but it just doesn’t make any sense. No one else (excluding one character for story reasons) at her job is struggling with overtime. The whole mess is clearly self inflicted as she could easily just leave the work for later or quit and find a better job. The longer the series continues without any meaningful change to her work situation (to either justify the overtime or change its nature) the dumber any more annoying the whole thing becomes.
Thankfully the meta story and romance subplot both inched forward in this volume, but if the next volume doesn’t do something meaninful with the whole overtime situation, I’m done. 3/5
A Tale of the Secret Saint - Vol 6
Literally half a story for an above average price… This and the last volume (excluding filler “side stories”) could have easily been one light novel. Instead someone in the process decided to split the arc in half and pad it out with filler to double dip into the audiences wallets.
The actual story was fine. The ususal antics with the main character fumbling around to make up bad excuses for using OP powers. A modest bit of character and story progression. But even if the last two novels had been one proper volume it would have been 3/5. As an overpriced, half arc… 1/5.
decided to split the arc in half and pad it out with filler to double dip
Yeah, the same happened to the last two volumes of By the Grace of the Gods. Those two volumes clearly should have been one. With the added bonus that there were 7 months between them.
Infinite Dendrogram: Volume 2 - So here I was, happy to find a new series with a lot of volumes, only to get immediately turned off again in the prologue of volume 2. I really, really hate media where children are killed or even tortured and this seems to be the big plot thing in this volume. They went too heavy on the kill and torture little kids just to drive the point home that the antagonists are evil. I think one or two kids would have done the job just well, but putting their victims in the hundreds makes this lackluster response by the world around it feel unrealistic. I also found out why I had pegged the series as SciFi. Apparently there are mechs in this setting. - 2/10
D-Genesis: Three Years after the Dungeons Appeared Volume 6 - Ah yes, the series with the obscure references thrown in every 2 sentences as if it were by divine decree. Like talking about the design of condom boxes for 2 pages in a situation that warrants the US bringing a nuke into Japan. You know just normal everyday discussions and banter. The rest is nothing happening at all. It’s like the current season of Tensura with just people talking, plotting, and theory-crafting non-stop. The unrelated tangents in this series really fray my nerves. For example they capture a monster and want to cut it in half. Side character brings out an knife to do so. Normally that would have been it. Here there is a 272-word tangent (yep I ran it trough a word count) about how different regions use different knives for eel and how that dates back to samurai. Just 272 words down the drain for nothing at all relating to the task at hand or the plot in general. And that’s the entire book. Tangents about weapons, tangents about pest control companies, tangents about condoms, tangents about chemistry, tangents about tangents… LOLOL I just looked up my impression about the last volume and I really forgot all about the tangents. Too funny.
Babel, Vol. 1: A Girl Embarks on a Journey of Words - Good premise. MC is actually shocked to find herself in an isekai world and her reactions are understandable. I like that she is actively trying to get back instead of just going all “yeehaa adventure!!”. The laissez-faire attitude of most MCs to getting Isekaid is one of my long-time gripes. So, I want to like her, but I just can’t get past her internal reasoning and naivete. She is either willfully ignorant or obnoxiously oblivious depending on how you want to look at it. It’s not all bad, there is a arc in the middle that I really liked, but looking at the whole volume it was rather middling. - 5/10 edit: After having slept over it, I deduct another 2 points. MC is just a damles in distress who needs to be saved and carried by male side characters at every turn and what power she has she conveniently forgets whenever she would need it. Her familiar also seems to forget that it exists and could save her at any time. It’s a uninterrupted string of plot holes for the sake of artificial drama. There are story beats that have no conclusion at all.
spoiler
There is a near death experience where some spirit or what tells her that the solution to the problem is already inside her. You would think that she gets an epiphany and knows how to defeat the big bad in the nick of time, but that gets never mentioned again and the solution is that some third party that got mentioned maybe once or twice in the story in bylines solved everything off-screen (off page?) while MC was away. Her whole involvement was like the Rose arc in Star Wars. Just filler with no involvement in the outcome of the story.
So my final score is 3/10.
