I adore this novel, even when I had reservations about reading such a short story which leaves practically no room for character development and world building, well, realistically at least. This story, in my opinion has more depth than some of the template-heavy cliche JP fantasy novels that I read (and I like a good handful of them, to be honest).

However, I still have a gripe with this work. The flow of text even in light of how the story is structured feels more like a summary than an actual story. It feels like a aggregate of events taken from the timeline in which the protagonist had their wild adventures in rather than being more, personal. Don't get me wrong, the events in this novel are written to be emotionally gripping, but they are emotionally gripping in the sense of a case study, you would feel extreme, even inexplicable emotions when reading about events perpetrated by human hands as cold, hard facts. But those case studies at the core don't serve as windows to connect into a charcter's story, those case studies serve as a reminder to learn and to not repeat what already has been. This novel unintentionally reads like one of those case studies for me, one where I understand the situation, the reason behind the protagonist's convoluted actions and the underlying message the author wants to convey. But I still would've prefrerred if I could fully immerse myself into the protagonist's world without a constant, nagging sense of discomfort that makes the reading experience strangely grounded in reality.