RKasa

A half-decent fantasy story with some shounen ai overtones. Most of the tale takes place in the Castle of the Thousand-Year Labyrinth, an old, massive structure laden with puzzle-oriented traps and a lost history. The traversal throughout this ornate dungeon is handled well, for the most part, though some aspects of the castle and its hazards could've been better explained. The same holds true for the final set of chapters, which (without spoiling too much) are somewhat different than the ones that have come before. These endgame scenes are all very dramatic, but certain key aspects are poorly handled.

Our main cast of seven handsome young men consists of six who are famous throughout the empire for various reasons, and the main character Ewan, who hails from an island and has no idea why he's been chosen, like the others, to be a candidate for the next emperor. In this way, the story reminds me of that in Astra: Lost in Space, which features an ensemble of several accomplished teens along with a seemingly ordinary main character. However, aside from this cast arrangement and the fact that they have been thrown into a precarious situation, the two are fairly different.

The "seven princes" all fit neatly into archetypes-- the dutiful warrior, the gentle artist, the eccentric merchant, and so on-- though they have enough of their own individual personalities to be a fun cast to read about. They're all visually pleasing to the eye as well, and there are some scenes which seem tailor-made to fuel fujoshi imaginations. There's no outright BL, just hinting and teasing, but said hints and teases are very well executed.

Overall, this makes for a pleasant, fluffy read, with its short length feeling just right. There's nothing about this story that's especially groundbreaking, nor does it do much that's better done elsewhere, but sometimes, you just want a tasty bit of brain candy. This is that sort of series.