The Retired Hero and His Hotel Maids

New readers are advised to drop this book after reading the latest chapter. Don't even think about continuing or keeping it on your reading list; just throw it away, remove it from your bookshelf, or you'll suffer terribly! This is a lesson learned the hard way by three years of readers! This author has almost never added extra chapters in four years, only updating to the bare minimum of 2,000 words per day. The reading experience is extremely painful. Even if you wait a year and come back, the updated content might not even cover a complete volume, let alone a single plot point. So, if you like it, just read the latest chapter and then drop it; following it is torture.

These long posts by Pineapple Bun are all done out of pure passion, but the returns are completely disproportionate to the effort. Resources are being monopolized by cross-dressing and yuri (lesbian) fanfiction, leading to a serious loss of users.

After you subscribe, you will see: 1. Various incompetent teammates who drag the protagonist down. 2. A protagonist who insists on showing mercy and hiding his strength, even when his teammates are constantly sacrificing themselves. 3. Villains who are whitewashed using excuses like "naivety" and "being forced." 4. Readers who accuse you of being a brainless fan of wish fulfillment when you question the protagonist's actions. 5. The author's poor writing skills, resulting in a dragging narrative and a chaotic ending. 6. The damned practice of not killing off characters, and the classic "good looks are justice."

Just finished watching episode 312, and it's ridiculously stupid! A deputy to the Imperial Princess can't even prioritize when chasing criminals? Author, do you think your readers are idiots? Having someone with one foot in power flirting with the protagonist instead of doing their job—and this is supposedly a survivor on the battlefield? How did someone who doesn't prioritize mission objectives survive and gain the Princess's favor? Author, explain this to me! And then, a crucial witness gets his neck choked—this part completely disconnects from the Princess's earlier storyline!

(Spoiler Warning) After reading numerous novels on Pineapple Bun for four years, this is the only one I think deserves a perfect score. It's rare to find a book this enjoyable to read these days. After all the reading, I finally came back to this one. The balance between everyday life and battles, the ever-present captivating mysteries, the thrilling climaxes, and so on. Let's start with the protagonist, Chen Ai. He doesn't hide his strength just to appear powerful, which is my favorite thing about him. He's actually a tragic hero; his painful and intriguing past immediately made me like him. He has his own beliefs and his own history; his strength is earned through blood, tears, and sweat...

Keep going! My only requirement for you is that you stay alive and don't do anything rash.

The book isn't perfect; it has quite a few flaws, but it's undeniably well-written. I especially loved the section before the Ajin Kingdom arc. The later parts, however, noticeably faltered as the writing progressed. The author is incompetent. I don't know the author's creative process or their life, and I don't care. I'm just a casual reader, but the constant excuses for delays and lack of updates are particularly pretentious. Other authors might be experiencing writer's block, but this author is perpetually stuck in a rut. There's no consolation in that. They can't manage their mindset while writing, and they can't manage it when doing other things either. They just write whatever comes to mind, what a waste of a good book.

After reading it three times, to be honest, I think the beginning of the book is excellent, reaching its peak in the forest and the beast kingdom, with the story of the retired hero and the maid being very well-developed. However, in the northwest, the number of filler chapters increases significantly. Perhaps the author intended to focus on battles outside the inn, but the book's title is "Retired Hero and Maid," which includes not only the hero and maid but also their relationship. Other aspects of their lives could be explored extensively in side stories, but shouldn't be overemphasized in the main plot. Perhaps the author intended to lay the groundwork, but I wasn't particularly impressed by the foreshadowing. Arriving in the elven kingdom, learning cooking and raising archers is understandable, leading to the introduction of the elven princess...

The novel's writing is quite good, especially the archery hero in the second volume, whose pacing, interweaving flashbacks and present-day events, is excellent. There's a lot of character development, making it feel like an ensemble piece. Overall, it's a relatively good work among online novels or light novels, but its weaknesses are also quite obvious: the actions and initial intentions are inconsistent. The author wants to retire, so they don't want to show it, hiding things away, keeping villains alive even when they could be sentenced, leaving them vulnerable. The overall writing is dragging, always hovering around a 50/50 split, no matter how serious the plot is, resulting in a disjointed reading experience. I hope the pacing can be faster.

One of the few reasons I haven't deleted the pineapple bun app is this: keep going! I've been watching it since high school, and I hope I'll see the ending in my lifetime.