The execution lacked a lot in the way the story was told. We initially get a point of view of Mari, the youkai and Taro, the prince. I initially quite liked Taro. He clearly didn’t like what was going on in the palace and how youkai were treated. However at the moment of meeting Mari there is an instalove from his side, and something he has been planning for a while goes right out of the water. After that his point of views solely focus on Mari and I feel like we lost the righteous prince we got the meet in the first couple of chapters. It was a real shame because he could have been a great character. His complete personality change in the last 20% or so was also not that great.
After a few chapters of going back and forth between Mari and Taro point of views, we get the point of view of Akira. I could have honestly done without him. He also has a complete focus on Mari and his chapters were completely boring to read for most of the book. I just didn’t get a real personality from him at all. He was so bland. I also felt that his only reason for getting a point of view was so he could show the youkai resistance. Which he didn’t even care about. It was such a missed opportunity. There were other ways to show the resistance.
The resistance also felt so lackluster. We only saw a few characters but they were going to storm the palace? Yeah, no…