DNF at 56%

I tried so hard to finish this book but I just couldn't do it.

The pace is already very slow and stop-start. The prose and translation are incredibly clunky and incomprehensible at times and slows down the reading pace even more. Many times the grammar and sentences didn't make any structural sense. And while I was reading an eARC copy, which means some fine line editing hasn't been done, this felt like a much larger issue and the manuscript read like a draft that needed at least one or two major editing run-throughs.

The plot of The Heart Of The Nhaga revolves around a trio of men from three different races (a Rekon, a Tokkebi, and a Kim aka human) who go on a journey to pick up a Nhaga to bring back to some temple for... some reason. I don't think we actually know why (at least it's never explained for the 56% of the book that I read although I'm sure it all gets revealed at the end). The leader of the trio is Kagan, the human, and he has some undisclosed beef with the Nhaga. He's an expert on them and their society but he also hates them so much that any Nhaga he encounters, he butchers up and eats. The Nhaga are a snake-like race who are almost indestructible and immortal after they get their hearts extracted during their coming of age ceremony at age 22. They are a matriarchal society that treats men as second-class citizens who are only good for getting the women pregnant and are treated as property (aka reverse misogyny I guess?). The Nhaga as a race are separated from the rest of the world and are enemies to everyone else so their land is protected by thick jungle that doesn't let anyone else through.

So far the plot had been riddled with plotholes of all kinds, half of which I'm sure come from bad translation. The biggest one that was driving me insane the whole time was that the Nhaga have infrared vision so they see everything by how much heat it exudes. However, MULTIPLE TIMES a Nhaga was able to see things the way humans do, like seeing someone's expression or the way a building or other inanimate objects look. But when the plot calls for it, all of a sudden a Nhaga character can ONLY see heat and if something is cold they simply do not see it. Make it make sense.

Another thing to note about this book is that it's boy fantasy for incels. Which was definitely a genre that was very popular back in the year this book was originally published in Korean. It did not age well at all so I'm very confused about the decision to publish this in 2026 by this translator who has been consistently translating women and LGBTQ writers.

There are no women in this book (other than a mention of an inconsequential character's wife and talk about how some warriors get all the women or something in that vein) except the Nhaga, who are all evil and horrible and only care about status and popping out babies. There is one exception but she is good and pure and has voluntarily abstained from sex even though all these men want her.

It comes as no surprise that there is an overwhelming amount of casual (and not so casual) violence toward the Nhaga women from Kagan especially. I'm no stranger to gore or violence in fantasy and I'm here for it when it serves a purpose but the sheer hate permeating the pages when this gore and violence happens was honestly disgusting. Yes, it's fantasy but so much of fantasy is wish-fulfillment and all fantasy is political, whether it wants to be or not. And the main politics of The Heart of the Nhaga is apparently men's rights.

I did find some of the worldbuilding intriguing enough to keep me going for over 200 pages though, so that's saying something.

Overall, this was a nightmare. A waste of my time I can't ever get back and it was a lot of time. I'm actually kind of upset about all the things this book put me through and I should've DNF-ed sooner but I kept hoping it would get better. Read at your own risk. I would probably recommend this to Dungeon Crawler Carl defenders and some Brandon Sanderson and JRR Martin fans.

Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for this eARC.

enjoyed this a lot more as a memoir than self-help (only because this was not the flavor of mental illness i have so it just wasn't personally relevant).