Volume 1 Synopsis: The legendary web novel that has captivated readers everywhere is finally available in print!
"What I want is to make you my wife and have you bear my children."
"Request denied!"
Witches are outcasts who live for ages untold and bring calamity with their immense power. Oscar, crown prince of the great nation of Farsas, seeks out Tinasha — the most powerful witch in the world — in order to break the curse placed on him in childhood that prevents him from leaving any descendant...
What happens when a dashingly handsome prince with unmatched fighting abilities and an antimagic sword meets the most powerful and beautiful witch in the world?
Nothing much of consequence, really. And who cares? Neither of these people have problems worth telling a story about.
I know this series is popular, and I guess I can see why - but it did nothing for me. The main problem I think is the lack of meaningful conflict. There's plenty of conflict - a bit of murder, some dog-monster summoning, some subterfuge, etc etc. None of it really challenges the characters though. Of course, maybe there's a difficult battle or whatever that they overcome with their power, but that's as far as it goes.
It's clear that the author is trying to set up some stuff for later books - but I'm not going to read those so I guess I'll never know. All the antagonists are infuriatingly vague about what it is they actually want, so we don't know what the stakes of any conflict are. The only time I thought there might be some serious upset to the status quo was when Oscar slapped an antimagic thing on Tinasha and threatened to rape her - but of course he didn't mean it for real and she instantly moved on - wtf?.
I guess if you like the characters, or are looking for this specific sort of male-gazey fantasy-romance thing it might be enjoyable (apparently the author is a woman, but it certainly felt to me like a male self-insert protagonist going after the "perfect prize" type female love interest. Maybe it works the other way too though?). Also possibly it gets better with more volumes, but I'm not willing to put in any more time to find out.
Difficulty-wise, it's not hard, but it does have a decently large vocabulary including stuff that's not common. I did a lot of looking stuff up in the first half, but not a lot later on.