The Return of the Iron-blood Sword Hound

I was attracted to the manhwa first then I found the novel. That mean I started the novel from the academy arc. Before the academy arc, solely base on the manhwa it is a solid 5*. Many people don't like mc's characters and don't understand if he so smart why didn't he do this do that. Well I like his characters and totally understand why he did what he did. Even if you are smart, when you got raised like that and got deeply hurt you will act just like he did. ... more>> Unsocialized even when it can benefit greatly in saving the world + the deep hatred for Hugo even when he know the truth about him. All geniuses are weirdos and they not always make the most efficient decisions. I trully f*ck with this mc The academy arc is bad but not crazy bad like other reviews say. It goes from bloody and coldheart to nuisance sily childish stuffs so it's surely a bit annoying. True to other reviews, MC can do so much better for his goal but he choose a roundabout way to do it just to force unnecessary interactions and friendships. I skipped a lot of words of academy and prison arc (the arc after the academy one) because I think these 2 arcs are somewhat bad compare to the arcs before. After the prison arc I thought all the bad things are gone now and only great things from the great showdown left. Hell no I was so wrong. At least these 2 arcs still have efforts put into them. The 4 ten-corspes left are so anticlimactic. Why the heck are they so weak, so trivial so whatever. And the ending of the novel is even worse. Things are rushed too much. It's a whole let down even when compare to the 2 previous arc.
My biggest complain about the plot is: if you don't have good reason for the reincarnated then just don't tell us the reason instead of writting a super s*upid illogical reason. After learning the truth about that I just feel so freaking s*upid, might even rate it down to 2 stars. <<less

I only continued to read it because I love when characters reveal their secrets or secret identity and reactions to that but... oh boy... I really, really regret wasting so much time on this. I don't know how old author is but it read as sth 12 years old would write. And to be honest 12 years old would probably be better. Characters: they don't make sense. Most of them are just NPCs. Most of them are s*upid, zero common sense. MC isn't much better. His choices often are opposite to ... more>> what we know about him. No emotional depth. One of romantic interest is enraged with demon mu*dering children and them randomly thinks how broad are Vikir's back and how she wants to help him. Like?? Girl?? Maybe not now? Plot: makes absolutely no sense! Power levels of everyone are all over the place. Strong people randomly can't fight because of some rumble lying around and blocking their vision. There are long talks in the middle of fights. There are a lot of situations that happens for no reason. Don't get me even started on pee incident. So if you are here because you didn't want to wait for mahwa, don't do this to yourself. Just wait. Manhwa is better. <<less

I read the webtoon and decided to read the novel to get further along in the story. The comic version is definitely better as you are shown what's happening. This does not really read like a novel as many things are described to you instead of being in first person. In addition, its very repetitive and requires a significant amount of belief suspension. I ended up checking out the spoilers and learned that as these "misunderstandings" with female characters is just an excuse for his harem. The revenge and lack of emotions are ... more>> not consistent. He is getting revenge for his death and that of his friends and colleagues but he supposedly has no emotions or feelings. The author also cannot decide which "voice" to use leading to multiple styles within the same chapter. Sometimes first person, sometimes as an observer from a character's view point, sometimes as 3rd party observer, and sometimes just in the mind of the character. I don't like harem stories since the women tend to be one-dimensional which is the case here. With the exception of the 2nd female that is introduced, none of them truly have a real reason for their interest in the ML. Also his friendships are pretty shallow and I don't get how he's friends with them. We are not shown any bonding scenes, so the friendship is just being defined cause of a "shared" (one-sided) experienece. <<less

The Academy Arc ruined it for me. Sure, it was cliché before too but still fun and not s*upid in such an intolerable way that I didn't want to read it anymore but god I cannot bring myself to continue. It's the whole talk of the main character developing (I was actually l0oking forward to him being anything but a stone wall emotionally for once) and he himself actually saying something like "Oh, I felt something inside me change/break" and then there not being any changes is my last straw. Look, I read ... more>> a lot of Web-/Light novels and can deal with a lot of things but something like this just grinds my gears. If the MC is an unfeeling, apathetic, as*hole the book can still be good but this just doesn't work here because here there is that moment where the MC acknowledges his 'change' - and afterwards the author acts as if something actually did change (it gets mentioned several times I think) when it didn't. Adding to that is the unnecessarily lengthened crossdressing plot where it just kept going long after it had lost its humour or fun factor, if that even existed in the first place. There's just line after line of other characters being smitten with the crossdressing MC, talking about how he looks exactly like a girl and how beautiful he is, that it just made me want to throw my phone at the wall. But okay, you could say I'm biased since these kinds of plots just aren't really my thing and if you enjoy them then it won't bother you, but the point still stands that it just drags endlessly. Other problems I had: The joke where one of the Heroines threatens to neuter the MC wasn't funny the first time and still isn't funny the fifth or whatever. I just found it disgusting since he actually had to run away to escape from her and it's presented as this actually serious threat to him so maybe this is just me, but I found it pretty distasteful. The characters get dumber the longer you read. I was pretty much screaming at the MC when he didn't see something I had figured out three chapters ago since it was so obvious, but he's still there thinking hard like it's some complicated problem when a brain-dead person would've figured it out before him. So at some point I just sat there watching as this dumbass bumbles about when this wouldn't even be a problem if he had a lick of common sense. It was just very frustrating, is what I wanted to say, since the plot screeches to a halt until he figures out something you knew already - and when he does finally come to the conclusion you've already reached ten chapters before you're supposed to react like it's a shock and be surprised. Infuriating, to say the least. The Villain Spoiler his father, Hugo [collapse] gets his teeth pulled out early on and any threat he may have posed is ignorantly removed. To give the full context: Spoiler Hugo's painted as this overwhelmingly strong, near emotionless and brutal character that doesn't care about his children and only values people who have great talent. An intimidating character that actually poses a threat to our MC since he is the head of his house and can move some of the most powerful people on the continent however he wishes, plus he is the ultimate authority the MC cannot escape and who's orders he has to obey until he can find a way to somehow break away from his family. This was what interested me in the first place, since the MC loathes his father and wants revenge against him for wrongfully killing him/ruining his life but at the same time he has to obey this man's words and pretend to be a good, talented son for him again after he regresses. The MC continually getting stronger and barely hiding his seething hatred while Hugo, the head of house, could kill him at any time should he become suspicious sounded like a fresh and interesting premise. Intrigue and scheming + action scenes would be pretty tense in such a setting, no? So tell me why the author choose to make Hugo do a complete 180 personalty wise the second MC brings back his lost niece and suddenly he's this soft, doting grandfather that would do anything for this little girl. Even the MC was flabbergasted when this happened in the novel and sure, it would've been kinda funny if it was a gag or something but since Hugo is supposed to be this imposing evil the MC cannot possibly defeat it just ruins any kind of tension that may have been established before. Now, since the MC brought her back to him, Hugo's suddenly nicer to him and listens to the MC's opinions + seems to care for him, it just made the whole plot until now feel cheap. This is a revenge story, if I have to remind you. A revenge story that lost its main antagonist some 150 chapters in. Instead of the threatening, unfeeling Hugo as the final-boss we now get some other generic 'wants to ruin the world because plot'-cult or something and I find that pretty disappointing. [collapse] The Heroines aren't really anything special, pretty cookie-cutter. I did like the first Heroine's story Spoiler where she gets possessed by a demon (I think? Been a while since I've read it, sorry) because of cultivation even despite her talent. I thought that could be something interesting. [collapse] and the one in the jungle grew on me. The third one, I think Spoiler the saint [collapse] was in the same situation as the MC for me: Okay in the beginning and then becoming worse and worse - though I actually grew to dislike her while I'm just disappointed at the MC. Finally, a conclusion to this long, rambling review. Personally, I cannot recommend this novel because of the previously mentioned flaws but if you read it anyway good on you. I hope you like it more than me, genuinely. <<less

Quality dropped so much in the last few dozen chapters, I'm doubting my sanity about having a thought it was interesting in the first place. I was captivated by the gorgeous art in the comic, and continued with the novel for quite a long time, but it degraded in all aspects so much, I'm no longer sure if it was any good to begin with. Everything was unreadably braindead for a while already, and I was skipping chapters in hope that elusive "plot" gets back on track, but it returned in as ... more>> biggest turd you could possibly imagine. This is a webnovel. These are long. It doesn't matter if there were some good things, if author flushes it all down the drain and replaces everything with the worst crap. Please don't waste your time on this. I don't recommend it to anyone. <<less

TLDR: Plot feels really sh*t, characters other than MC seem almost brain-dead, and arcs can overstay their welcome. Regardless, I loved it, it is a decent web novel all around and I recommend it for people who like dialogue and action heavy stories. It is not for everyone and should be regarded as the level of the average Japanese isekais with the MC being very similar with such characters. I read this twice, first through MTL and secondly with Korean, and I tried to have a perspective of a person who ... more>> doesn't know Korean the first time through. Full Review with spoilers below about my personal rant about this novel. Spoiler In short, the story is complete bullsh*t with little plot that is surprisingly only redeemable in its rom-com, slice of life, and combat aspects. Vikir shares the similar traits of a typical Japanese isekai edgy protagonist: he has effectively no emotions, is overpowered as f*ck even being in his pre-teens, and gets all the girls. This begs the question for me, what was the point of writing this kind of story in the first place? The world building on the surface isn’t unique in magical medieval fantasy land, but the depth of it is unimaginable. The 7 main families Leviathan (poison), Don Quixote (heroism), Usher (assassination), Baskerville (warfare), Quo Vadis (faith), Morgue (magic), and Bourgeois (money) are from different aspects of folklore and mythology that it is surprising to see them mesh together in a world so well. Additionally, factors like the Ballak tribes, monsters in the deep forest, and the prison in the deep add a lot of nuance to an otherwise very shallow world. Yet the author makes easily deductible plot points (the 8th demon being Camus Morgue for instance instead of Snake Morgue, Sadi really being Ouruburuous, etc) while being able to show that they are to make really good twists (the principal turns out to be the 5th demon, while in the 5th demon’s lair, the ceiling above the 1st floor was where he really was, and the 1st demon had split into two into the evil 1st prince and Piggy, the 2nd prince, etc). So it just seems that the author was really lazy in making some plot points yet strong in others, which makes for a wildly inconsistent story line. If there was the point in why such a story was conceived, the best answer I could give is “because the author wanted to write down their imagination”. If the point of the story was a way to show how the emotionless can regain their emotions or how precious such things are, the story should’ve stopped the moment Vikir hit the 8th fang swordsmanship, or the 10th swordsmanship should’ve been about emotions. Yet he reaches that point about halfway into the story, leaving me little to believe that was the point of the story. In particular, the virtual and the prison arc were the most slogging to read, and I frequently had to skip a chapter because I could not give a damn about the story itself. Also, why is everyone but Vikir portrayed as dumb as shit, I feel like either the characters that are truly smart don’t get enough limelight or portrayed as much (with the exception of the head jailer and the former Sadi head) and the side characters just feel like filler to me most of the time. Vikir seems to discover something almost every single time, and don’t get me started on Dolores, it really took her 300+ chapters from the orphanage incident to realize that Vikir was the night hound? Like she even got a artifact that lets her peer into the person’s true face, and refuses to use it twice despite it stating her curiosity for Vikir, well it could be understood as her faith towards the Night Hound but still, it’s f*cking ridiculous to me as a reader. ‘ However, two things I thought the author did very well, using previous plot points and humor, there were many times I honestly just laughed from the writing, the dialogue is pretty good even through MTL, and the author has a tendency to use something from the past 200 chapters for a crucial plot point in the present, which is amazing but I can see some people not liking it as it requires memorization of past events and characters. Overall, I liked the novel, I liked the harem, I liked Tudor, Piggy, Osiris, etc but me liking Hugo was a huge surprise for me in the end. Yet it has many major flaws, and I really wished the author stopped its style of wuxia/xianxia writing to have these ‘young masters’ act so superior and ultimately getting their face caved in, like it’s fine the first time, but once it comes up twice or thrice, it has overstayed its welcome especially within the light novel scene. Would I recommend anyone reading this? If you like revenge p*rn, action, and good worldbuilding sure, but the plot is like the ocean, you have to go along with the flow no matter where it takes you and the author seems to like overwriting a bit too much. Also I hate that all the romance was effectively shoved in 5-6 after story chapters and I really wished that more romance chapters was a thing, since the female cast all were superb in general in terms of character development, and I loved the happy ending most of all. [collapse] <<less

The main character is a Mary Sue with almost no personality, the side characters are borderline ret*rded, and the plot itself is non-existent. I was able to read (skim) the chapters due it it being a popcorn novel, but the author has gotten lazy and resorted to Xianxia level plot points to keep things going (think young masters and "low-key" MCs).

Hi, I started reading the story after chapter 75 when I finished the manhwa chapter 45 the story is good and has an op and cool MC who regress back in time to take revenge on his father. The plot is going good till now but really him dying in the face of the world and his stay in the barbarian land ruins it for me like he is totally venerable there and gets beaten up badly though he retaliates but, it doesn't feel like the MC we know but ... more>> now the story has again come to the right track and is going good, Talking about the translations they are really good like yes helscans did a good job by picking this up has they have my thanks for it though there are stilll some minor problems it way way way better than many translation sites and of course mtl the update schedule is also acceptable with mass releases frequently. all in all the story's good the translation is good and the plot is good too so mfs just go and read <<less