"What's this, the enemy army is advancing in a pike formation, you've got my interest! The pikes are a little short, but yo-" "Oh so they're just going to charge at the protagonist one by one." "Oh he's just going to cut fully armored men in half." * "I guess I shouldn't have expected too much from the action side of things, but the protagonist has a cool grizzled aunt who governed a border march and made it prosperous.""Oh you're just planting death flags in her back like a colonial explorer."

"Oh and now she's dead and it's not even chapter four yet."

*

"Well maybe there will still be an interesting political situation that will-"

"Oh so the protagonist's reputation as a bloodthirsty coward willing to do anything to save his own skin doesn't even last two chapters."

"Oh everything bad can be blamed on a second born prince and his evil lackeys who hate commoners."

*

While my expectations were not high, this was nevertheless disappointing.