The story follows our lead man Woorim, a reformed middle school badass and current uni level design student virgin in a seemingly religiously virtuous relationship with the ever pious Sua. Woorim is settling into his new room away from home and discovers that his new home is haunted by the spirit of a sexually frustrated ghost, Mihyang, who cannot reach reincarnation until she’s able to have intercourse as a human. AS A HUMAN, keep that in mind because, well, she’s able to indulge sexually through dreams.
The only issue is that Woorim is totally in love with his Sua and plans to remain a virgin for her. Oh, but Mihyang is not the only threat to our asexual couple. A mysterious and beautiful friend from the past, Jiwoo, appears, still hung up on Woorim but unsure of the reason for her fixation. (This is actually a plot line that was handled almost too patiently.)
There’s also Joomi, a promiscuous and jaded classmate who is also interested in Woorim because he seems too good to be true. Of these leads, all but Mihyang enjoy friendships outside of romantic relationships. In fact, the friendship Sua shares with Gayoung may prove to be an absolutely lethal bond.
Overall this is a story about this cast, their secrets, the people they’ll betray to keep these secrets, and the lengths they’ll go to in order to maintain these secrets.
So, my rating, that smoking’ hot 6.5... The story adds up to being above meh, still short of great, but ultimately better than good because of its ambitions.
To start with the good: our characters become complex through the storytelling. Villains unravel before us and unlikely heroes rise to become people we can root for. In the end, the secondary leads are given the chance to skirt moral lines in ways that are fairly realistic. The smut is appealing, the art is anatomically better than a lot in its category. You will not want for more titillation. The plot is really the bread and butter for BLACKSWAN and you can tell that’s what the author really leaned on as a strength of the piece. The storylines intersect in interesting ways in the main story.
Again, the characters become complex with the story as it progresses. These are characters whose pasts are integral and are only revealed partially to create temporal tension for the reader.
This is where I’ll begin the critique because I think this is not a particularly interesting use of tension because within the story this tension of revealing the past in pieces doesn’t really influence the main current story. So this tension is built for the readers but in most cases not for the characters and sometimes this makes the story flat.
The only real tension points within the story are whether or not Woorim’s infidelity will be revealed to Sua and
the reverse in Sua’s case
and, if you like me were paying attention, because Jiwoo is very pretty and seemed like she’d participate more in the main story and Joomi seems pretty into Woorim, whether or not something will happen between Woorim and one of the other living women. These are great on their own but I think some of the other tensions lessen the poignance of these so that by the time they’re addressed it’s not as exciting as it could be.
I did sorta binge read though so that might be on me. My main issues really are the pacing and the lack of Jiwoo who ends up being pretty central to the climax and denouement. I think this just needed more time. There are really good elements. I think the author got too excited or the publisher wanted a quick wrap up or maybe someone lost steam along the way because the ending is extremely rushed compared to the beginning. And if you don’t pay attention you’ll be confused.
I was skimming and might’ve missed something but if you don’t get it I’ll explain it
It's revealed that Mihyang took a human lover once and he was pushed to suicide because the separation of the living and the dead became too much of a barrier. Luckily, Mihyang meets another ghost who can shapeshift and may or may not be this suicidal ex (I cannot stress enough that I was SKIMMING) and it’s actually meeting him and sleeping with him that allows her to reincarnate along with him hoping that they’ll find each other in another life. Sua, her affair with Gayoung exposed, is guilty and laments her abuse and the fact that she’s now alone with only her nemesis Joomi who is now up from the coma Sua is responsible for. Jiwoo, my fave, love her!!!!, anyway, she ends up with Woorim who literally made her bleed after that dubiously consensual messy hookup. Mind you my girl is nothing but good to that man but he’s so mean to her and barely acknowledges her feelings and really only seems to settle with her. This is a personal dislike. The story doesn’t seem to view it this way and to be fair he did just find out the love of his life and first love is actually gay and using him (who, mind you, he’s BEEN CHEATING ON FOR MONTHS so it’s kinda like????? Idek he still liked her at that point but go off king I guess)
Anywho, the story was interesting. I was obviously invested even though I zoomed through some of it. I just think the writing could have been better.
(-98)
