Reviews

The story start is kind of fast, so it's easy to get hooked. From the beginning there are things happening. Story in general has lot of potential but in my opinion has a lot of flaws. One of them are politics. Author's handling of politics is mediocre at best. Lot of things about politics of whole manga doesn't make sense. This is hard to explain without spoilers so I can't dwell on it too much, but let's say that pretty much everything from succession, laws, government type, political structure, general audience (people, officials etc) reaction to political affairs etc are done fairly poor. I do understand what kind of manga this is, and I understand that it is bound to dwell more into interpersonal relationships and drama, but politics are integral part of it (manga starts with politics) so I think author should've handled this one better. For example the manga starts with coup, one character kills the king, Yona isn't the heir (but she is?), her husband is supposedly next king (well what kind of succession is that), she is chased from castle, the usurper proclaims himself a new king, gets coronated really fast, and you know what? No one gives a damn. Is it so easy to usurp the throne in this country? Beside all that, usurper (if succession was a common primogeniture) was supposed to be the next heir in the first place, since apparently succession isn't absolute primogeniture since Yona isn't heir (but still maybe she is?).

I also do not like character development of certain characters. Main character kind of start getting some major development, which then starts to diminish and author kind of neglects it for the sake of some other things. While on the other hand, some characters get some, let's call it 'undeserved' and 'unrealistic' development because of the way story is build up (which has some major flaws. I do not like the way author handles intepersonal stuff. Especially since latest chapter when Yona comes back to her home and is seeing her father's murderer always, but author makes it way too sympathetic toward the murdered to the point you can't help but feel bad for the whole plot up until latest arc. Main love is also too cringy even for teenage characters. Author builds their relationship in every other chapter, but doesn't build it at the same time, and kind of puts it on hold just to make people wait for them to start getting some "free time" again.

Beside that, I think that storytelling is also fairly mediocre. Story is interesting in beginning, and all the way to the a bit more than half of the manga, but then starts lacking. One of the reasons are repeatable situations in which main characters get themselves into. After that, actions of main characters later on kind of do not make sense, especially since the start of the latest arc. Author relies too much on interpersonal feeling, relationships, dram etc rather than making sense in many other essential parts of the whole plot. Author creates some mysterious things from past and makes people wait for their revelations, and also makes some interpersonal stuff that makes people wait for next chapters, but fails to make sense in other plot stuff (many other plot stuff).

It was hard to explain this without spoiling too much but I kind of tried. It would've been easier and you would understand my points better if I spoiled some more stuff, but whatever. In general, story can be enjoyable if you're mostly interested in interpersonal feelings, drama, relationships between characters etc and not care all that much if author makes sense of certain aspects of plot.