There is a legend which predicts the birth of a child who will bring the world to ruin. In terms of a typical fantasy story you can’t get much more clichéd than this, and for the first 30-odd pages we are shown how bad and scary things will be should the prophecy be fulfilled.
17 years later we see a child who casually claims to be ‘the cursed one’ in conversation. Her giving this disclaimer is apparently enough reason for her to be evil. I feel that this is a bit of a cop-out on the writer’s part as I’m unconvinced of her motivations (meaning that she doesn’t seem to have any). Perhaps I’m jumping the gun and all will be explained in due course, but having to trudge through another 30 pages which has little purpose apart from saying “oh, she’s so baaad” in a straight-faced and pretentious way didn’t quite cut it for me. That’s 60 pages gone so far, over a third of the book, and I have little reason to want to continue.
Anyway, if you muscle through this frankly naff introduction sequence you’ll find that things do pick up a bit. We’re finally introduced to our main hero Bakhong, a guy who likes his gambling, his girls and can handle himself in a fight. While this section offers little in the way of surprises, it succeeds in being quite entertaining. Bakhong’s utter shamelessness in the way he peeps on girls is funny and woe betide anybody who dares to block his view! He is indeed a very intense character, just not perhaps in the way you would expect a main hero to be. I hope his hopeless attitude can continue as the duller main story comes to the fore in later volumes as he is its only salvation.
Aside from the lacklustre story, the other main complaint I have with this series is the artwork. The cover art does the volume no favours (why are his eyes and hair the same as his skin?), but it is the inconsistency of the drawings which I find to be most off-putting. When at its best, the drawings are very accomplished with very confident use of cross-hatching. The proportions and clothing are generally solid throughout as well. What bothers me is that it looks like a different person has been working on the facial expressions. I can accept SD-style artwork any day, but not when it’s been as poorly integrated as this. It looks out of place to see such crudely drawn faces on fully grown bodies. If the faces were simply whitened out to leave blank faces it would be an immediate improvement.
This book doesn’t really have any particular merit other than to fill shelf space between the good stuff. I guess you need to read something like this every now and then to realise the quality of the other series you read. That said, this isn’t a complete car-crash of a book and there are a couple of laughs to be had. I just can’t say I could recommend it. Maybe things will pick up later on, but for the time being try something like Qwan or RG Veda instead.
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"This book reeks of being average to the point of being offensive. You could do worse, but then you could easily do much, much better. "
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