Cassandra > Recent Status Updates

Ch. 215 on Manga Plus:
The Culling Game arc is dragging out. I’m glad that Akutami is picking the pace back up, but the writing has been disjointed for the past twenty chapters. Improved pacing doesn’t mask the story’s incoherencies.

Jon, Arya, Davos, Tyrion, & Daenerys have more interesting chapters while Bran's are slow & and harder to get through. But I like that they all share parallels: Jon & Daenerys are on a journeys & have found abandoned towns; Arya & Tyrion continue to rely on their wits & lies to survive; & Bran & Davos are strangers to politics, but still involve themselves for the benefit of their respective kings.

I'm so close to dropping this book. It's an impulse-read, but there's hardly any pay off to my decision lol

The characters don't have a personality. The premise is interesting, but the execution is off. Given the high ratings that this book gets, I assume that what matters to most of the fans of this book (and series) are the racy scenes that are just as poorly written as the characters.

Two chapters in and the story is, I don't know... weird? Reiss misuses the word "notwithstanding" in the first paragraph of the story, and a lot of sentences are either incomplete or awkwardly written. Also, the story itself is awkward—things move too quickly, and Reiss gives readers almost no time to fully digest anything that transpires.

Martin's book is so detailed that sometimes it makes me cringe whenever a male character has/thinks of being with a woman. I like that each character's chapters are filled with words/phrases/thoughts that identify with them. Every character doesn't lack a personality; every character is consistent.

This volume starts off strong with Sho and Shinra's mother's past. There are more allusions to Christianity and Catholicism.

It took a while, but Ohkubo brings up the concern of killing humans over infernals again, though this time in Benimaru's perspective. It seems like most characters were aware that they weren't killing monsters. It's a sad detail, but I like that Ohkubo brings this back. It humanizes the victims and it emphasizes the White Clads' villainy.

The finale of the story is pretty close, but it just seems like Ohkubo is pushing for the characters to get into relationships in chapter 209. It's pretty random, given the situation that everyone's in. Some relationships were hinted at throughout the series, but now Ohkubo is trying to pair off characters that didn't have any romantic interest in each other... It's weird.