The Seven Deadly Sins stars Meliodas, a tavern owner who serves utterly terrible food and whose only companion is a talking pig named Hawk. One day a mysterious "Rust Knight" arrives at Meliodas' tavern. The Knight, who turns out to really be Princess Elizabeth, is looking for the Seven Deadly Sins, a chivalric order made up of seven criminals who each bear the mark of a beast upon their bodies. The Holy Knights disbanded the Seven Deadly Sins years ago after they were accused of plotting to overthrow the kingdom.

Now, however, the Holy Knights have done what they accused the Seven Deadly Sins of trying to do, and Princess Elizabeth believes the Seven Deadly Sins are the kingdom's last hope. Luckily for her, Meliodas is not only one of those famed warriors, specifically the Dragon Sin of Wrath, he's looking for the others too.

I got this first volume in PDF form via a Humble Bundle a while back. Interestingly, the file was formatted in such a way that changing to "two page layout" actually properly placed the pages for right-to-left reading - definitely a step up from the Inuyashiki volume formatting.

This was technically okay. The artwork was actually pretty good, more detailed than I expected. I loved the way Suzuki drew the foggy forest. I occasionally had trouble following some of the action, but I think that was more due to the size of the PDF pages on my monitor (I didn't feel like zooming in) than to any problems with the artwork.

The fantasy aspect felt a bit generic, but that could change. This first volume was light on details as to what, exactly, each of the Seven Deadly Sins could do. Meliodas appeared to have super-strength - I wasn't sure if his broken sword was anything special or really just a random broken sword. One of the other Seven Deadly Sins, Diana, was a giant, but apparently that had nothing to do with the mark she bore (Serpent Sin of Envy) as a member of the Seven Deadly Sins. No information was given as to what the different beasts signified, although I assume they're important in some way and are maybe tied in to what each of the members of the group can do.

Hawk, Meliodas' animal companion, was reasonably cute and got points for calling out Meliodas' frequent gross behavior. Unfortunately, the character also added to the series' overall generic feel. I was reminded of Fairy Tail's Plue and Happy - it seems like every shounen fantasy adventure group needs at least one cute and comedic animal character.

The series' overly generic feeling is part of the reason I'm not sure I want to continue on. My other issue with this series was how much fan service and boob and butt grabbing it contained. The first time Meliodas met Princess Elizabeth, he groped her breasts while she was still unconscious, supposedly to confirm that she was female. From that point on, it felt like the story was a series of action scenes glued together with boob and butt grabbing jokes. Readers were supposed to laugh at Meliodas' antics and Princess Elizabeth's reactions (she mostly either didn't notice what he was doing or dismissed it as harmless - Hawk was more disgusted and upset than she was). I not only didn't think it was funny, I found myself becoming increasingly annoyed. It was a lazy and gross way for Suzuki to try to get some laughs.

There's a Humble Bundle available for another 24 hours that has volumes 1 to 22 of this series. Wikipedia tells me that The Seven Deadly Sins is still ongoing and is currently up to 31 volumes, so this is a pretty significant chunk. That said, I'm not sure that I want to take the plunge.

Extras:

Eight pages of design sketches for The Seven Deadly Sins.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

What a complete an utter disappointment.

Slow, bland, dull with boring, uninteresting characters; a hero that could've been great, but was far removed from the glimpses of Adam Raiker we got throughout the series, and a bland, rather one-dimensional heroine. The romance, even though its "lukewarmness" is a staple in this series was sub par, the action scenes non-existent, there was just the slow drone of investigation that dragged the story into the abyss of boring alongside a predictable villain and motive.

The only spark in the darkness was the reunion of the entire team in order to get their boss out of trouble, but it came too late in the story to make any kind of difference.

If you like paranormal/paranormal romance at all then this book is a must read book! It was my top read of 2016 and I am having withdraws from not beinging able to read book two yet.. which is coming I'm just not so patiently waiting! If you like sexy demons ..sin .. with excitement and a kick but story line then this book is definitely for you.. if you have never read about such a thing then do it anyways because this is for you as well!!