Do we even are sure it is light novel? (...) Either way, light novel are not meant to be trash.
Light novel categorization is fairly arbitrary. Twelve Kingdom isn't. Haruhi or Spice & Wolf are. Whatever. It's how it is; and this one is one, I'm fairly sure.
And you are right, they aren't supposed to be trash. They usually aren't written to win literature prizes either, though (well, except for light novel prizes ^^). Gotta adjust expectations, esp. if it's smut.
It introduced and developed its main character nice and it flowed well for the most part. It had few flaws I mentioned already, but overall it did a good job at doing what it set out to do. And if we consider it being part smut, it did good job on 1 out of 2 sex scenes.
Well, I disagree. I don't think it did a particular good job at any of this. A barely passable one, maybe ;)
That is more what I meant before, there is no 1 set way to judge whatever something is good or bad. It's all subjective and will work differently depending on person.
IMO that's too often an excuse for bad fiction. "It's all subjective!" Well, it is, but so's everything else. "Killing is bad!" is subjective.
There's plenty of reasonable criteria you can use to judge a book. And separate a good one from a bad one (not saying that I'm an expert on it, because I'm not. But still ...).
Also, that doesn't mean that you can't enjoy bad fiction. I certainly do often enough. But it's like eating candy; I can still acknowledge that it's bad food and if that I only ever eat candy I'll get sick and starve and die ...
I'm curious which LN tropes you meant exactly, as I failed to notice self insert otaku ...
Heh. Well, that'd be all the new isekai harem trash. You wouldn't get me to read one of those if you put a gun on my head (well, you might, depends on how stubborn I am that day and whether the gun is loaded).
But it's still - like the Tree of Origin. Human-elf racism. The princess. Pseudo-medieval-fantasy setting. Bla. The one thing that gets a pass I'd say is the curse. Not that that's not done before too, but it's not such a completely overused aspect.
Besides, while the otaku isn't self-inserted, I feel fairly safe in claiming that this was nonetheless targeted at a male otaku readership. Their role this time is just voyeurism instead of self-insertion (not saying that's anything bad, just sayin').