Goong 11

So Hee Park – Yen Press – 2011 – 26+ volumes
this is an omnibus containing vols 13-14

Okay, I won’t lie. These ceased to be reviews around volume 9 and started turning into pure fangirl ramblings. I love this series a lot, and other than saying that it tends to move at glacial speed and reuse the same issues over and over again, but that the romance is ridiculously addictive… there’s nothing critical here. I’m just going to squeal for the next several paragraphs. Because this volume was the absolute best yet.

There were several bombshells here. The first one drops early on, and comes from no less than the King of Korea (the story points out here that the Korea in their reality is unified, which I don’t think I realized before). He tells the truth of why he wants to depose Shin and make Yul Crown Prince, and it apparently has something to do with the dying wish of the former king. The current King selfishly overrode this for the benefit of his own son. I’m not quite sure if the issue is the King’s selfishness, or the fact that the dying wish of a former King can’t be denied, or that if the former King wished it so while he was still alive, that makes it an order to follow… I don’t know. There’s some big cry thing here, and both the Queen and Yul hear about it. Yul decides to use it as blackmail to set Chae-Kyung free.

But, truth is, she’s doing just fine now that Shin has mostly stopped being an awful human being. After what appears to be a disastrous address at parliament, Shin decides he would rather run away than face his father again. Chae-Kyung comes with him, and the next volume and some is basically just a romantic getaway for the two of them. It’s great. Shin finally clears the air between the two of them, and they are free to be a loving, care-free couple free of the constraints of being prince and princess. It’s a wonderful piece of story, other than the fact Ms. Park teases with possible sex scenes so often that it’s not even funny anymore.

The story is blown to pieces when Yul lets it slip that Shin may have known abut Chae-Kyung’s grandfather dying and not told her. This is in revenge for something else that blew the story apart, the fact that he confessed his undying love for her once again, and right in front of his fiancee. She turned him down flat and said plainly she didn’t want to associate with him anymore if he was going to continue to act that way.

At the end, the Queen decides that the story hasn’t been interesting enough lately and forces Chae-Kyung to divorce Prince Shin. This point was driven home earlier, when the Queen discussed the necessity of this with Chae-Kyung’s mother, but not before Chae-Kyung said a long piece about how much she loved Shin, the Queen, and had turned around on palace life.

Seriously. The drama in this series is ridiculous. And it’s annoying how people always happen to be standing in just the right place to overhear something important. Always the same things, too. That Prince Shin might not be crown prince anymore. Yul hitting on Chae-Kyung. Hyo-Rin and Shin in a compromising position. Bah.

It continues to bring the funny, though. The Shin/Chae-Kyung vacation presents many opportunities for Shin to be humiliated by the author, and there’s nothing better than seeing that boy humbled. Also, I loved seeing him open up to Chae-Kyung. That was pretty much all he did throughout the volume, and after mistreating her for so long, it felt great.

I hate myself a little for praising such a nasty character, but really. He’s better now.