
Art and Character Design: Quite good in places and, in others, confusing and lackluster. For the most part, the character art is excellent — with beautifully drawn bishonen characters in striking poses, framed with flowers and bubbles. The chibi art starts off in the first chapter as some of the weakest I’ve seen, but by the end of the book, these artists seem to have found their chibi-style and some of that becomes quite nice also. Many panels are unclear, however, due to a lack of variance in the lights and darks — the foreground objects blend right into the background objects (and speed lines) making it difficult to understand what exactly is happening. In some cases, I felt this was a deliberate choice — particularly in the sex scenes where I think the goal actually was to obscure the action — but it would occur with some frequency in the fight scenes as well, making it difficult to get caught up in the excitement.
Characters: Disappointing. For our romantic heroes, we have an 18-year-old prince, Linth, and a 30-something general, Sei, whom Linth appoints as his “Director General of the Imperial Guards” shortly after being raped by him. Yes, you read that right — the boy appears to have a unique interview process. Now, enough care is actually taken in developing General Sei’s personality and motivations (including reasons for the rape and his later overprotectiveness) that at least he feels full of potential. Almost all the flashbacks concern him and his backstory seems laden with drama and mystery. We can’t, unfortunately, say the same for Linth, who is portrayed as little more than a male nymphet whose main job seems to be to get in trouble, fall out of his clothes, get raped and cheerfully bounce back to want more sex with Sei. He makes a lot of noise about wanting to reform his Kingdom (Landa) but seems so foolish and does so little about it, it is baffling why anyone believes him. Truly, he’s the kind of character who gives “sunny ukes” their bad name. There’s a romantic rival, Baron Touri, who also rises to high position by raping the Prince (and to Prime Minister this time — he must’ve been pretty good…). With strong motivations of love, jealousy and duty, this rival could also have been interesting, but we learn very little about him other than that his subjects love him and that he used to top Sei, so that potential is also not realized. In the right hands, I could see how you might want to get to know Sei and Touri — but we spend most of our time with Linth and these most certainly are not the right hands.
Plot: Flimsy and contrived. The first few pages hold some promise of fun action-adventure-fantasy yaoi, but any plotting concerning battles and castle politics quickly devolves into an excuse for sex, rape and the occasionally Prince rescue. Characters make choices that make sense only in that they enable the next pairing or encounter. Dramatic reveals have no power because no time whatsoever is taken to set them up. The plotting feels like a paint-by-the-numbers imitation of every bad swords and royals drama you’ve ever read. To be fair, at the end of the book, there is an invasion plotline that the authors’ seem to actually care about, but we’ve learned so little about the players, it’s impossible for us to care about the stakes. In a sea of unpleasant traits, the storytelling is easily the worst and most neglected aspect of this book — honestly, it makes Kyo Kara Maoh seem like The Lion in Winter in comparison.
Romance: Well, they seem to love each other, so there’s that. Too bad, again, it’s almost impossible to care. Linth is such a consistent fool, it feels like Sei’s interest in him has more to do with his inner demons than any real connection. And Linth’s interest in Sei, while making more sense, seems to go little deeper than a childhood crush. They’re both very pretty, but beyond the eye-candy, there’s really not much to see here.
Sex: For what its worth, there’s a lot of it. Glowing cones of light and other obscuring techniques create a fair amount of emotional distance, but there’s sex every chapter and you can usually figure out what’s going on. As I’ve mentioned, though, this book has two rape scenes, and one is fairly heavy, involving blood dripping to the ground, so consider yourself warned. Afterwards, the Prince’s wounds give Sei an excuse for using an ointment in an erotic and dominating manner, so the fun just keeps coming. This latter scene is, I believe, intended to be romantic, yet even here the non-con undertones continue with the ever-consenting Prince muttering “no” throughout as if it were some kind of mantra. And when the boy’s not saying “no”, the characters are repetitively and portentously saying each others names. (You know the drill: “Oh, Ted!” “Oh, Martha!” “Ted!” “Martha!” “Teeeeed!”) It’s all so silly, it’s hard to think that anyone, even those who embrace non-con sex, would find these scenes truly erotic.
Overall: There’s some good character art in places and what might have been a fun set-up, but really, this is an awful book. Save your money.
Rated by the publisher “For Mature Audiences 18+.”
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