Aleksandr’s Reviews > The Nichan Smile > Status Update

Why are we getting so much history and world building fifty pages before the end of the novel

Why was this shit brought up earlier
Why are some female characters just now being introduced and developed

Why is Domino so damn annoying
Like Ero is terrible himself in a lot of ways but I don’t get why Ero willingly puts up with Domino’s continued insolence and disrespect
Ero doesn’t seem to be very adult.

These last two hundred pages, so far, are more interesting than the the rest of the book. It’s funny how I am more intrigued by the new lot introduced female character than Gus, the protagonist’s friend/love interest.

I think Gus would have interested me more if there was really anything to him. But he always seemed kinda pitiful.

Okay, it’s significantly better now. Not great but better. The world building is being shown off a bit in these last few sections and it’s well worth the read because it’s interesting. I wish more of this had been told earlier instead of via all these flashbacks and info dumping.

The language seems to be improving little by little.

Well, the author does adequately describe exactly what it’s like to be a very hormonal teenage boy

But at the same time wtf did I just read

The world building has improved a bit with the author going into more types of food and rituals the characters deal with. As well as other countries and their fauna. The language is still super odd though. These characters say so many modernisms that the speech just doesn’t seem to fit.

Sorry to update in such rapid succession but how old are the characters now? It’s been seven years since part one but there was a reference stating Domino was 13 or was that just an unclear pronoun ref? Wasn’t Domino like 8/9 in the first section?

The writing has only improved a smidge. An adult woman just flirted with a 13-year-old boy. I mean I’m all for world building where their norms are things we’d find taboo/controversial but there’s not enough legit world building to justify this. The world building is very lazy and the characters sound very very earthly.