Oh no. Another sequel that went wrong.
In one word? Boring. Nothing happened. I was scammed by the title. This proposal doesn't happen until halfway through the book. And in what universe were Kimiko and Eloquence getting together?
Let me explain. For the majority of the book, Kimiko is friends with Akira and Suuzu (if they are not together together, I’m going to rage!). In the meantime, Eloquence is being busy showing Tenma around his clan and making sure that his new friend (I was so not getting the just friends vibe) was okay and not as anxious as in the beginning. Eloquence and Kimiko don't even interact until there's this weird course of action where they're just both there and kind of betrothed all of a sudden? I wasn't buying it, therefore, I lost interest.
Also, there are so many subplots and unimportant details that just got me reeling. I came into this really excited. Loving the first book I wanted more of the Amaranthine. Kimiko and Eloquence seemed to be the major protagonists of this sequel. There are, of course, Suuzu, Akira and Isla. And two new characters, Tenma and Inti, who later claims Tenma as his own. In the start, these storylines, make sense to some degree. But then Tenma had one storyline and Kimiko had another that overlapped with Eloquence’s and Akira’s, and everything was just all over the place.
There is essentially no plot, no villains, and the story just takes a lot of chapters to take off. There’s this issue with the rogue dragon and the rapings, which was introduced in the first book and I was looking forward to solving this case. I found it was pretty marginalised in favour of this supposed brilliant accidental proposal, though. Honestly, I enjoyed the first pages the best. I was still enjoying this brand new world and the dynamic between Tenma and Quen got me really cheering for them. Then I got extremely annoyed at the pacing and how everything was progressing in ways that didn’t make really sense. The last chapters were ultimately saved by Argent and Gingko making an appearance and it was so good for my heart to see them.
Already while reading the first book I noticed that the storytelling really reminded me that of reading manga. A lot of characters are introduced, so quite a number of different points of view can be included. Also, the way the emotions and the character's inner thoughts were conveyed was familiar. In Tsumiko’s story, I found this approach really refreshing—a fellow manga-lover merging features from a manga with those from a novel. Considering it now, however, I found it somewhat bothersome, like it wasn’t implemented successfully. Or rather, it would have been awesome if there had been a plot.
And now, what really got me sputtering. What’s all this about having intercourse with animals? Starmark had sex with a reaver, a fellow dog amaranthine and an actual female dog?? I'm sorry, but how is this okay? I’m really really shocked that this was added because only two days ago I was studying psychopathology and one of the many disorders was also having sexual intercourse with animals. So I found this so not okay. Even if they are part animals and it is fantasy, I’m overly disturbed by this.