My review thus far

Thank you, I’m glad I’m not the only one of the opinion that this is often confusing or random. While I can’t say anything about the novel or if it’s following the novel right or not, or if the novel had as many holes as this does - I can say this is so confusing at times, particularly during lore dumps. I can’t remember the earlier examples, I just recall sitting there thinking, “What is this? Why is this even mentioned? How is it relevant? This is explained poorly, what does it mean?”

The most SIGNIFICANT example I can give and notably recall is the Eli Nerva / Count Winter flashback. First of all, I didn’t understand the mechanics of summoning and contracts. I came to the conclusion that Eli was the only one who could do so due to his bloodline and father’s forcefulness but even then that scene was vague, his family history in summoning is vague, the family history of them milking themselves upon failure and love(?) is vague, the whole death scene of his mother was vague in understanding. I’m not sure if this is an issue on the storytelling side of things, or the translation side. Additionally, going back to the Eli / Count Winter interaction, they dumped information about the arch-demons calling out to humans and driving them insane, is so little explained I’m being hit with whiplash as the world building, religious, and magic system are not always congruent. Why hasn’t this been mentioned earlier during Eli’s summoning scene? What is the timeline of all of this? Was Eli forcefully involved in summoning his demon before or after he met Count Winter? This entire chapter and scene were so confusing, I was left with more questions than information, I shouldn’t be questioning the integrity of the world building this much. While I will continue to read this, I’m just so lost on world building. And the attempted foreshadowing is just so heavy handed. Prophecies are tools best left vague and ambiguous, the author would have excelled here ironically, but instead they said, “Nah, let’s give them the plot, right her, right now.” Now we know she is a spirit master bc of the stone and will rally the arch-demons together, will bring prosperity whatever kingdom she’s in, and was likely brought back by Nerva BECAUSE she is that master that guides the arch-demons and the kingdoms will fall without her or something like that. That’s my prediction.

Like I said, I’ll read it because I’m a sucker for the art, and all of the moments entirely outside of the world’s lore and religion is paced well, but anything with it (religion, etc.) is so undercooked and half baked. And bro, fuck the adopted brother rubiyan or whatever his name is. He was a dick in the past and he’s a dick in the new present. His anger is justified, but borderlines possessive obsession that just makes me go ew. She’s said numerous times it wasn’t her- I loathe these tropes where typically the male leads will never believe a word from the FL’s mouth because he’s simply a biased, apathetic, dick who doesn’t even beg for forgiveness after all this grief and attacks on the FL. Rub(bish) is closely following that trope and if he doesn’t BEG, TRY TO KILL HIMSELF type shit beg for forgiveness, then I hope to never see him again lmfao. Anyway I’m done with the dramatics. 7/10 so far
╮(￣▽￣)╭