Plot: 6/9. Hackneyed saccharine
The protagonist was abruptly awoken by three hunters and therefore killed one of them, named Catharsis Wulfyre. Fearing their further pursuit and still feeble due to the winter hibernation, she disguised herself as a human girl and headed for the town in search of food. Unfortunately, she was recognized by the escaping hunters and fell off from the cliff while being chased by the whole town.
Unaware of the protagonist’s true nature, Homily saved her and soon they found themselves smitten with each other. After the protagonist rescued themselves from the ambush of three bandits, Homily confessed that she was actually one member of Wulfyre family who came here to annihilate a monster, aka the protagonist. According to Homily’s mother, the protagonist’s mother had long ago killed Baron Wulfyre, but her offspring somehow survived and cursed the family line of Wulfyre.
The protagonist followed Homily to visit the baroness and her family. She recognized her mom’s fang hanging on the baroness’ neck and rejected the baroness’ money intended to expel her, out of revenge on the baroness and desire for Homily as well. The family captured the protagonist’s pet bear and tortured it to lure her out. Her attempt to release her bear eventually succeeded under the unexpected assistance of a monster that she later realised was her accidental offspring.
The protagonist assassinated the baroness when they were hunting for the monster alone. But the baroness turned out to be the protagonist’s biological mother, who long ago ate the original baron and the baroness, masqueraded herself as the baroness, and spread the rumor of the curse. Because their species could consume their eggs to prolong their lifespan, and in this way, she could accounted for both the tragedy and her hunt in the future.
The protagonist hurried back to warn Homily. But she instead first confessed her own identity and love towards Homily, for whom she mistook Epigram, the sister of Homily. Epigram subsequently seized the protagonist and asked Homily to execute the monster with her own hand. Much to the protagonist’s astonishment, Homily murdered Epigram.
Informed of the truth, Homily requested of the baroness to drink the rosemary so as to reveal her true identity in public. After Homily’s failure, the protagonist—disguised as Epigram—participated in the baroness’ hunt to wait for the best opportunity. However, the baroness found the protagonist’s falsification, conquered her and demanded her egg.
She soaked her egg sac into the rosemary and henceforth poisoned the unsuspecting baroness with it. Afterwards, Homily and townspeople together eradicated the monster.
The couple adopted the offspring and lived happily together. The story ended in the protagonist’s wake-up after her second winter hibernation.
Core: 4/9. The first-person perspective on romantic in this book is an abomination for me, because most of the plot revolved around the personal feeling of a juvenile monster with whom I failed to sympathize and a family drama of her crush.
Do the target readers feel it acceptable for a woman to be wholeheartedly centered on the romantic relationship? The protagonist seemed not to have any normal characteristic, because all she occupied in her mind was either relish or propagation. In short, by presenting narcissistic reviews and behaving hot-headedly all the time, she made the whole story constantly unbearable.
Maybe that’s the curse of first-person perspective accompanied with the bliss of better reading immersion—sometimes readers are forced to stay together with characters they don’t like at all to comprehend the storyline. That is also why other writing aspects such as brilliant side characters often play an important role in the first-person perspective, because they offset the limitation of a psychological monologue harangued from the one and only protagonist by letting the protagonist only serve as an observer rather than the primary agent of the plot.
Character: 2/9. None of characters in this book were adorable or intelligent. However, I could have given a higher score to this aspect of the evaluation—as long as the protagonist hadn’t acted like an idiot from time to time.
- She needed meat desperately but went to the town at the risk of her life rather than ate her bear immediately.
- She forgot to change her appearance or at least her attire, before going to the town, showing her lack of the elementary caution that the hunters might have informed others.
- Why didn’t the protagonist hide a sac inside her body to horde the rosemary she had to intake rather than let it poison her inwards? After all, she had already placed sundry gadgets within herself.
- Why didn’t the protagonist realise that the curse might be cast by her biological mom instead of herself, when she found the fang of her mom upon the baroness? Instead, why did she continue to maintain that the curse never exist?
- At the table, she wanted to protect her bear from Wulfyre, however, by exposing the fact that the bear had some intimate connections with the monster to Wulfyre.
- When she confessed the final truth to Homily, she failed to keep the environment safe and private, observe Homily’s facial expression while speaking, or even make sure of the true identity of her interlocutor! Worst of all, the first thing she told to “Homily” was the fact that she was a monster aiming at devouring Homily originally—rather than the more urgent danger that Homily’s mom was actually the monster who had killed Homily’s parents and was currently about to eat both of them soon!
- Before she accused assembled guards of killers living richly on the suffering of people, why didn’t she have the right realisation that she was no better than them, as a monster herself?
- All of her plans seemed not only ridiculous but also lethal, had not it been for the constantly lucky accidents in her favour. Did she have the brain to meditate a proper plan in advance? Oh, I’m sorry. Literally or technically, she indeed lacked that crucial organ!
- Since I abominated those authors who only write idiots, welcome to my blacklist, John Wiswell!