Under the Oak Tree (The Novel) by Suji Kim
Under the Oak Tree started life as a webnovel on Korean webnovel site RIDI. It’s a fantasy romance consisting of three parts: part 1, Riftan’s back story, and part 2.
Part 1 has now been completely published in English, split across three volumes (the third came out in June). Riftan’s back story is slated for release in November this year, after which we’ll hopefully be getting the translations for part 2. I’m guessing that will be another three volumes, for a total of seven books, but we won’t know for sure until they announce more!
Having read the first two volumes in May and finishing the third volume earlier this month, I thought I’d do a (spoiler-free) review of the first part of the series – hopefully it helps anyone who’s trying to decide whether this is something they would want to read.
Note: There is also a webcomic version of this story that is also being translated and printed in English. Some people seem to think this is a novelisation of the comic – it’s not, the webnovel is the original. This review is for the novel versions. There is also an English webnovel translation (which I think is slightly ahead of the physical books and has a different translation), but this review is based on the physically published translation.
The strong point of this series is the relationships – both the romantic relationship between Maxi and Riftan, and the relationships between Maxi and all of the side characters. This is unusual for me, as I often find the relationships fall flat and I need some plot to keep me interested, but in this case it was very much the opposite, and I think this is directly reflected in my relative enjoyment of each instalment: I preferred volumes 1 and 2 to volume 3, and I think a large part of that is because Maxi and Riftan spent a lot of volume 3 apart from each other. It was definitely important for both plot and character development, but I missed seeing them together.
The fact that I enjoy Maxi and Riftan’s relationship so much is actually somewhat surprising – it’s definitely not the healthiest relationship ever. Luckily, our author is very much aware of that and I would argue that the main plot of this series is not them getting together (thank you, arranged marriage) or figuring out that they like each other like in a lot of romance books, but rather figuring out how to have a healthy relationship with other, and with themselves. This ticks a lot of boxes for me, actually, as it makes for a slow development in the character’s relationship but lots of on-page time for them to be in said relationship.
The biggest issue in their relationship is Maxi’s insecurity and Riftan’s overprotectiveness – both of which make sense for their relative traumas, but both of which majorly need addressing. The first three books see a ton of character growth for Maxi, and I think we’ll be getting similar from Riftan in the next part. They have communication issues throughout – partially Maxi is hiding a major ‘secret’ from Riftan out of fear that it will make him look at her differently. Normally this would piss me off, especially as it continues for most of these first there books, but it actually doesn’t. The communication issues they have feel organic to the characters, and it doesn’t make the whole plot reliant on miscommunication: things get done and the relationship progresses even with these issues in the background. Essentially, the communication issues are part of the overall issue with their relationship that need solving, but they don’t derail any semblance of reasonable plot.
I will say: Riftan and Maxi have a lot of sex. Sometimes this would be off-putting for me because I can find sex scenes boring, but not here. I would say that Riftan’s stamina and sexual urges seem unusually and unrealistically strong (either some magic happening or he might need a doctor), but there’s something quite interesting and compelling about the scenes. Which is definitely a good thing because book 1 has a lot of them: Maxi and Riftan do better with the physical side of their relationship than the emotional side, at least to begin with. I would say that the frequency of such scenes decreases over the course of the first three books as they find other ways to interact and grow an emotional bond as well, and as the greater plot unfurls. If you don’t mind slightly/very unrealistic sex scenes that are a lot of fun and do focus on female pleasure, then this will probably work well. If you don’t like sex scenes at all, I would think hard before reading this series.
As for the actual world and plot – it seems like a relatively standard webnovel faux-medieval Europe world with some DnD-style monsters thrown in, although the magic is kind of interesting and I’m looking forward to seeing more of it and more of the world in the next part of the series. This is definitely a book you read for the character development and the relationship rather than the action, though.
Overall, I gave the first two volumes 4 stars and the third volume 3.5 stars. I think the series currently sits at a very reread-able 3.75 stars, but I’m interested to see how that changes with future instalments.
Buy book 1!
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Have you started reading this series? If so, what do you think? If not, do you think you might like to give it a go?
Keira x
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