Solitary Lady

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Solitary Lady is an engrossing Otome story on the titular revenge story encompassing her eight lives. The tale consists of four families holding onto their seasonal themed powers that are gatekept with their bloodlines.

The hook of the story is something that’ll quickly set things up and not waste time, competently juggling all of our Lady’s past attempts at life, spreading them throughout the story. It’s arguably challenging to keep track of it at first, but it’s more than a welcomed sight at other stories that saunter and loiter round’ the meat of things.

And in that spirit–! I’m dumbfounded at the sheer non-existent readership and ... contemporary reviews that have yet not finished this manwha. The complete unknowability of the story shocks me to no end.

The general reviews are a bit lacking at the moment so I hope to inspire more reviews to be written ‘bout it for when you’ve read the manwha or if you’ve already done so.

Anyways, I want to stress that there’s been two seasons or break off points that happen due to a hiatus and it’ll be apparent that there’s an artist change. Point being is that it’s not a downgrade or ugly falloff. Rather it’s a different style which in its penultimate chapter titled “Solitude” has one of the best panels. The smooth composition, namely with our protagonist’s hair overflowing into a “S” shape interweaving within itself with a contrast of a dark sky painting the scene. Grace running and composing a beautiful scene of her journey.

I have to admit. I cried at the end of the chapter’s finale And I wish for you to experience it.

There’s some problems or avenues that I feel it could've explored or even capitalized on. Such as the outside world. Mainly with foregoing the world building for it; instead of giving us a concrete view they opt for plain dialogues of: “starvation and instability are present.” We’re told and not shown.

Instead. The posh four family’s squabble to further gatekeep their frivolous power takes precedence which is understandable. While the other nobles try to get their piece of the pie making for an ok conflict. But at the end the motive felt empty since we didn’t really see their struggle beyond boot licking their relatives with superpowers. Still I’m hella impressed how they managed to secretly portray one of the main themes of the story. That’s revealed in the climax.

You see it. The foreshadowing. How it’s laid throughout and interwoven in every character’s struggle. A reflection to behold. Seeing how it recontextualizes some downfalls that seem natural at first. Then rethinking these as curses and even karma. How these tragedies are affecting all of our main cast.
For example, the romance which made me cry perfectly encompasses it, Though I don’t want to get into the why or I’ll ruin the surprise. Which is another thing. It blossoms somewhat late into the story and… it might even seem weird. That’s until it throws a guttural punch. Showing how it obfuscates our Protagonist’s; Hilise’s goal. Really entrenching and burrowing us further into the conflict.

All in all I might be a Hag-Maxxer coming out of this. I’ve never felt such envy towards a protagonist stepping on an old granny. Along with it being a gripping story that entertains beautifully, even if it isn’t perfect.

Finally I thank Nhovah, my fellow friend who recommended this story. Along with AlexD who binged all of it after I cattaloged it on MAL, presumably skipping his sleep. Inspiring me to finish my reading, which took 2 months. Still, they made this review possible, so I give out my gratitude to them. And you for reading.

This review will contain my thoughts up to chapter 78. Essentially, this is a good story that is currently meandering that could end up being better or worse depending on how some stuff develops. I'm also pretty critical of stuff in this review purely because I thought this manhwa was going to be one of the really good ones. I thought this was going to be cream of the crop Otome Isekai material, but it just isn't. Not bad, just more standard than I wanted it to be.

It's Hilise Inoden's 8th time around and she's ready to die. She went through whole arcs in ... her previous arcs from dying at the hands of her abusive family, to trusting an outsider who only married her for her blood to eventually killing everyone and then herself in her 7th life. Now it's her 8th and all she wants to do is die.

The story starts off really strongly with her basically speed running what it takes other series millennia to do. She recalls her previous lives and gains the power of the Inodens which is her family's power which is this pretty cool thorn-based spring power (the four major families have season-based powers). Only one person from each generation can get this power making it a point of contention in her previous lives as her father hates her for "killing" her mother during childbirth (what is with that troupe!?), her brother views her as nothing but a shield for her stepsister Gabrielle who is a spoiled brat who spends the whole story kissing up to whoever will listen.

I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for stories where the FL has agency, so this series had my attention right off the bat, especially since the whole "revenge" thing wasn't her goal in this life. As previously stated Hilise wants to die, really badly. She has been around 7 times and just wants it to end. So, she becomes the head of the family so she can access the super-secret library. Through that goal comes all the political intrigue stuff that naturally comes with this kind of story and like you'd expect from this kind of story all of that takes a back seat to the ML and FL's relationship.

Axion Berzet is an interesting ML. He's the head of one of the four major families and can use the power of autumn. The big thing that makes him interesting (because his personality is pretty standard) is that the FL had a bunch of different relationship with him in her previous lives with the last one ending rather horribly. Meanwhile Axion is having sudden flashes of her previous lives and what she meant to him in each life without really understanding what this means.

Obviously, the whole story revolves around her searching for a way to die while he slowly regains his memories and tries to convince her that living is better. I think that's a pretty good premise. The problem is the pacing, the pacing is all over the place. Sometimes it's really, really fast, other times there will be a ton of chapters dedicated to nothing. Another thing that messes with the pacing is the backstories. I have mixed opinions about this, on one hand giving each of her lives a full backstory that we get to see gives all of them emotional weight and gets us to fully understand the person she has become... on the other hand there is a lot of backstories, and the pacing does suffer due to it. Every life that she has needs a backstory that sets up character motivations, while this is cool is also kills some of the pacing. However, the biggest pacing kill is just all the nothingness that goes on in the story.

And oh boy the conspiracy stuff. It's whatever, for being the main antagonistic force it doesn't really have a whole lot of story weight, and what little story weight it does have just makes me thing of other Otome Isekai that have done big, weird conspiracies better but maybe it'll pull itself together in the end especially since they are trying to tie it to her previous lives by A: purposefully omitting information of what happened in her 7th life and B: making other characters remember the pervious lives other than Axion (which as of now I'm not too fond of, especially with her father remembering some stuff, but maybe the explanation will be pretty good).

Most recently the manhwa has been focusing on romance, finishing up her backstories (and by finishing up I mean they've been continuing them) and tying the first emperor with the main plot. In fact, I would say the most recent chapters have been rather interesting. I hope this is a continual trend and the whole conspiracy thing pans out as much as the author thinks it's going to.

All in all, I really thought that Solitary Lady was going to be one of those special Otome Isekai and I suppose I'm a bit bitter that overall. And you know what, who knows, maybe this will end up being fantastic with just a bit of a slump in the middle. The most recent few chapters have been rather good, and I feel like all the pieces are almost in play. I suppose we'll see.

I will never recommend anyone to read this, unless you have a weird taste for confusing, senseless story, and irrational, disagreeable characters.

The first season had me hooked despite the cliche revenge manhwa plot. The romance was acceptable, the mystery seemed interesting, and the main characters were lovable.

Everything was fine until the second season (or book I think is how they call it). The plot started going downhill afterwards. The series of events made no sense, the characters went crazy, the art declined, and even the main characters became intolerable. Everyone was dropping this series and wondering about the mental condition of the author.

I want my ... 6 hours back. I spent my precious rest day on this when I could’ve read something better.