Your point is well taken. I wouldn't like to read a wholly predictable story with a character so over-powered that any exercise of personal agency is immediately fulfilled by the world. But there are shades in between preserving agency and violating it, and this story simply runs a bit too far towards the latter for me to derive any true enjoyment from it. There are many stories out there who achieve a better balance without as much filler. But even unsatisfying stories have a way of gripping you, even though you know you will have regretted spending so much time on something so personally unsatisfying after the fact. Hence the warning. I also think we disagree on what it actually means to be happy reading a book. I can derive genuine pleasure from reading a tragedy as I can from a comedy. That a book should make you happy doesn't require it to be a happy book. But conversely, an unhappy book isn't of good quality just because it puts the characters through the ringer. It takes a bit more than making the main character consistently pathetic in order to write an enjoyable piece.

Indeed. Unfortunately, in my experience, there is hardly ever any improvement after this sort of trope. Every single story which has featured protagonists of this type - dependent and controllable - either tends to grow out of it after at most a few dozen chapters (partly because it is so unsatisfying) or makes it a point to hammer it home at every opportunity. I've learned to cut my losses and simply drop such volumes. In my mind, a story can go down bleak alleys, but there must be a trade-off that makes it worth it. Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is the furthest thing from a happy novel, but it makes up for it in the sheer insight it provides. This story, I am sorry to say, is merely unsatisfying - like many "realist" fantasies. The author can always respond by some variant of "betrayal and compulsion actually does happen in real life, so I'm just trying to reflect that." There is scarcely a more condescending phrase. We do not need fantasy authors to remind us that life is unfair - if we needed a dose of real life, all we'd need to to is attend a funeral, or visit a hospital. We go to fiction - fantasy in particular - to sake the thirst of those parts of ourselves which hope for something better; growth, justice, truth. They are like water in a desert. We do not to be reminded of the unfairness of the real world. I shudder to think of a "realist" Lord of the Rings.

I signed up literally for one reason only. To warn you away from reading this book, at least until further chapters are released. I will not reveal spoilers. I will only say that the most important quality which makes a novel worthy of being read - the agency of the main character - is violated in the most unsatisfying way, after hundreds of chapters of suspense and development. The end of the second volume genuinely makes me wish that I had not started this book. Wherever this trope appears, it is almost universally reviled. This is partly because it is the ultimate exercise in lazy arbitrariness - if the character is forced to act a certain way, then the plot can move forward regardless of the actual personality of the character. I will not insult the author. But I will say that going by the tone of his writing, there will be little to no karma from his agency having been betrayed. There will be no satisfying resolution. The main character will continue to be disrespected, pitied, and remain fundamentally pathetic. The underdog will remain in the mud, and those that spit on him will go on with their day with a calm face and a superior conscience. I hope I am wrong. But I suspect not. It is too much to expect that this feedback will be received. So I can only warn - if you want over 300 chapters of well-written, exciting action and development followed by a whimper which nullified all that came before it, then read on.