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The Hero Laughs While Walking the Path of Vengeance a Second Time (light novel) #4
The Hero Laughs While Walking the Path of Vengeance a Second Time, Vol. 4 (light novel): The Merchant, Mired in Greed
YOU CAN’T PUT A PRICE ON VENGEANCE
With Eumis dead, Kaito, Minnalis, and Shuria head to the trade city of Dartras to exact revenge on Grond, the avaricious merchant who sold out Kaito in his past life. Though Grond all but rules Dartras using his connections to the criminal underworld, which include a pair of bloodthirsty killers at his beck and call, the three partners in crime immediately set to work undermining his business through a combination of subterfuge and good old-fashioned violence. When Kaito finally gets Grond in his clutches, he forces the corrupt magnate to make an impossible Would he rather part with his money or his life?
With Eumis dead, Kaito, Minnalis, and Shuria head to the trade city of Dartras to exact revenge on Grond, the avaricious merchant who sold out Kaito in his past life. Though Grond all but rules Dartras using his connections to the criminal underworld, which include a pair of bloodthirsty killers at his beck and call, the three partners in crime immediately set to work undermining his business through a combination of subterfuge and good old-fashioned violence. When Kaito finally gets Grond in his clutches, he forces the corrupt magnate to make an impossible Would he rather part with his money or his life?
- GenresLight NovelFantasy
256 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 13, 2022
19 people are currently reading
23 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 23, 2022
This time around was with a merchant called Grond. The revenge against him was actually pretty creative, though I thought it was gonna go in a totally different direction, based on what I thought were clues in the first few chapters. I got a bit bored whenever economic and business principles came up, but aside from that this volume wasn’t bad.
We’re starting to head towards a big fight, so we’ll see how things go from here.
We’re starting to head towards a big fight, so we’ll see how things go from here.
January 2, 2023
I gave volume 1 a 2 out of 5, but it's better with later volumes providing quality over quantity. Also thankfully, there's no BS like "I'm also just a victim" in this series.
May 14, 2023
This novel series, this volume in particular, would be fitting for assessment by undergraduate students in fiction studies. From an academic perspective, facets of narrative focus, characterization, and symbolic continuity all vacillate so fantastically from volume to volume that an attentive student can pull reams of insight as to how one might (or might not) effectively compose horror fiction. To wit, THE HERO LAUGHS WHILE WALKING THE PATH OF VENGEANCE A SECOND TIME v4 is poorly written, despite integrating new and engaging characters, and retreading a script of familiar themes.
Kaito, now flanked by Minnalis and Shuria, hops over to a city called Dartras. Once there, he sets in motion an array of events queued to roil, embarrass, impoverish, and humiliate a mid-tier merchant named Grond Gordott. In his previous life, Kaito got the runaround from Grond. The greedy merchant funneled the hero's money into his underground criminal empire: drug manufacturing, human trafficking, child soldiers, secretive fight clubs. Grond was a busy guy, and his lust for coin resulted in an act of defiance that nearly tore Kaito's heart in two.
Naturally, revenge is on the table. The problem, in THE HERO LAUGHS...v4, is the author's resolutely terrible job of encouraging readers to care about the book's 230 pages of violence. The bulk of this predicament is structural. At the onset, the author strings readers along for nearly 50 pages before even partially clueing readers into what's actually going on (e.g., Kaito and the girls dig a random pit on the outskirts of town; Kaito spies on random people and makes vague arrangements; the narrative point of view hops into the heads of characters readers haven't been introduced to yet). The author lays on the foreshadowing extraordinarily thick, which is to say, quite lazily.
None of this does the story any good, because the nature this novel series isn't to surprise readers with Kaito's depravity, it's to connect them to it.
And that's the core problem: The Hero Laughs... is no longer about enmeshing readers into the emotional labyrinth of a man with nothing to lose; now, it's about overcommitting to the gore and incivility of its main cast, and nothing more. The previous volume hinted strongly of the author's inclination to diverge from this central premise. The current volume merely confirms the pattern.
Does the novel have interesting characters? Yes, but they're also awkward clichés. For example, readers meet a vicious young knife fighter, Nonorick, who is also an over-the-top, gratingly effeminate sadist. Readers again encounter Metelia Laurelia, a cleric and priestess with restored memories, who harbors an affection for Kaito. Except, readers encounter this mysterious priestess exclusively in an epilogue for the second consecutive volume. What a waste.
Is the violence clever and memorable? Yes, but it's also assiduously overwrought and unnecessarily confusing. For example, Kaito's fight with Nonorick is short and sweet and highly entertaining, but his end-game torture of Grond is hard to follow and goes on for more than 30 pages. The novel's first 50 pages will put one to sleep, and it's final 30 pages are no better.
Will readers learn anything new about the protagonist? Yes, but the details are nowhere near enough to warrant the spiderweb of chaos the author penned to justify them. For example, one of Kaito's soul blades, the Fang of the Close Shave, is a blade composed of "countless gnashing teeth" that chew the flesh of their victim. Very adroit. Or is it? The tool is wasted on a criminal underling, and the weapon is never used again.
THE HERO LAUGHS WHILE WALKING THE PATH OF VENGEANCE A SECOND TIME v4 is not a particularly good book. But readers who fancy deconstructing fiction for all of its curiosities may find something worth digging into. How much foreshadowing is too much foreshadowing? When are alternate points of view a benefit versus a burden to reader comprehension? What value do secondary characters possess when the novel's dramatic irony intuits their roles well in advance? What value do antagonists possess when their worth, to either the protagonist or the audience, is so foreign as to have been irrelevant prior to the novel's own events? What's the point of crafting a good foil if the character (or motive) in question never emerges from the epilogue's realm of possibility?
Kaito, now flanked by Minnalis and Shuria, hops over to a city called Dartras. Once there, he sets in motion an array of events queued to roil, embarrass, impoverish, and humiliate a mid-tier merchant named Grond Gordott. In his previous life, Kaito got the runaround from Grond. The greedy merchant funneled the hero's money into his underground criminal empire: drug manufacturing, human trafficking, child soldiers, secretive fight clubs. Grond was a busy guy, and his lust for coin resulted in an act of defiance that nearly tore Kaito's heart in two.
Naturally, revenge is on the table. The problem, in THE HERO LAUGHS...v4, is the author's resolutely terrible job of encouraging readers to care about the book's 230 pages of violence. The bulk of this predicament is structural. At the onset, the author strings readers along for nearly 50 pages before even partially clueing readers into what's actually going on (e.g., Kaito and the girls dig a random pit on the outskirts of town; Kaito spies on random people and makes vague arrangements; the narrative point of view hops into the heads of characters readers haven't been introduced to yet). The author lays on the foreshadowing extraordinarily thick, which is to say, quite lazily.
None of this does the story any good, because the nature this novel series isn't to surprise readers with Kaito's depravity, it's to connect them to it.
And that's the core problem: The Hero Laughs... is no longer about enmeshing readers into the emotional labyrinth of a man with nothing to lose; now, it's about overcommitting to the gore and incivility of its main cast, and nothing more. The previous volume hinted strongly of the author's inclination to diverge from this central premise. The current volume merely confirms the pattern.
Does the novel have interesting characters? Yes, but they're also awkward clichés. For example, readers meet a vicious young knife fighter, Nonorick, who is also an over-the-top, gratingly effeminate sadist. Readers again encounter Metelia Laurelia, a cleric and priestess with restored memories, who harbors an affection for Kaito. Except, readers encounter this mysterious priestess exclusively in an epilogue for the second consecutive volume. What a waste.
Is the violence clever and memorable? Yes, but it's also assiduously overwrought and unnecessarily confusing. For example, Kaito's fight with Nonorick is short and sweet and highly entertaining, but his end-game torture of Grond is hard to follow and goes on for more than 30 pages. The novel's first 50 pages will put one to sleep, and it's final 30 pages are no better.
Will readers learn anything new about the protagonist? Yes, but the details are nowhere near enough to warrant the spiderweb of chaos the author penned to justify them. For example, one of Kaito's soul blades, the Fang of the Close Shave, is a blade composed of "countless gnashing teeth" that chew the flesh of their victim. Very adroit. Or is it? The tool is wasted on a criminal underling, and the weapon is never used again.
THE HERO LAUGHS WHILE WALKING THE PATH OF VENGEANCE A SECOND TIME v4 is not a particularly good book. But readers who fancy deconstructing fiction for all of its curiosities may find something worth digging into. How much foreshadowing is too much foreshadowing? When are alternate points of view a benefit versus a burden to reader comprehension? What value do secondary characters possess when the novel's dramatic irony intuits their roles well in advance? What value do antagonists possess when their worth, to either the protagonist or the audience, is so foreign as to have been irrelevant prior to the novel's own events? What's the point of crafting a good foil if the character (or motive) in question never emerges from the epilogue's realm of possibility?
December 28, 2022
I am once again reminded that I really like LNs that feature merchants doing merchant stuff. Of course, the merchant this time was the object of Kaito's revenge. Overall, this volume was decent. Dark as usual.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews