I've heard that Sevens is a cut above most Japanese fantasy webnovels; that even though it is a harem story it's one that is told well, with good interactions, and that even the worldbuilding is pretty good. And so I picked it up and I'm now about halfway through the book. Overall, I'd say that what I've heard about the book is true. Or at least it's true to a degree. The characters are pretty decent; I'd say that they're a lot better than you'd see in the average isekai novel, and the inclusion of the ancestors is a great touch. That said, outside of said ancestors, the characterizations are still on the thin side and most of them work within a fairly narrow range of traits. The same goes for the harem: yes, the female characters do conflict with one another, but once the conflict has been established, their interactions don't really proceed too much beyond that. This lack of variability probably won't be too bad normally, but I've been reading material from a writer who is actually very good at writing female characters (and female characters in a harem at that!) and the difference is night and day. Likewise the worldbuilding is decent and the main conflict actually has some tension. That said, these really aren't the main strengths of the book so they're just not that important compared to the characters. So far I'd say that Sevens isn't as good as the better Japanese webnovels like Overlord but it's still significantly better than stuff like Slime Tensei or Shield Hero. That said, I would not posit Sevens as an example of a good harem novel - for that there are Chinese novels out there which are far and away better.
If Sevens were to be judged primarily as a comedy then it wouldn't be very good because it's not that funny. I'd say that it's a relatively serious story with humorous underpinnings. There are a lot of books out there like that. Correction: it's a high fantasy novel. Low fantasy wouldn't have elves and talking Qilins and magical dungeons.
Are you rating the light novel or webnovel? I will need to double check but it should be low fantasy. Fantasy seems to be on the high side but compared to novels like Overlord that one person can use magic to change the entire world, it is low fantasy. It is like comparing Wuxia or Xianxia
I'm reading the webnovel, but it shouldn't make that much difference for my purposes. The difference between high and low fantasy is not how powerful the fantasy is; it's about how visible the fantasy elements are. If your book has tons of magical monsters or elves or dwarves and so on, it's going to be high fantasy. Low fantasy would be where these elements may present but they're not on screen very much; maybe like the Conan stories or even less fantastical.
I am referring to the Japanese tags on Syosetu I will need to verify but I think it's low fantasy EDIT: I verified it. It's low fantasy. https://ncode.syosetu.com/novelview/infotop/ncode/n3250cl/
Yeah, I finished the book and it's utter nonsense to consider it low fantasy. By the end, both sides are summoning gazillions of undead and all sorts of other nonsense. I'd guess that whoever called it low fantasy has no idea what that term means. Anyways, I think that reading farther into the book only serves to heighten the negative parts. It's too long for its subject matter and the last few volumes just drag on and on. In particular the last fights are way too long for their own good, and the only one that was any fun was the Legend Dragon fight and that's only because it was completely played for laughs. It's also a bit odd that even though there's a lot of time spent on building up a gigantic army, this army ends up being rendered completely irrelevant by the narrative. The characters don't fare any better as they don't really get more interesting the more you see of them. Aside from a small number of exceptions characters stay the same after they first get introduced (which is fine by itself) and they generally have only a vary narrow range of interactions. As such they get stale over time, and lends to the same scenes constantly repeating without adding much entertainment value. At the lower end of the scale, Celes and Novem actually become worse characters the more that's revealed about them. On the flip side, the best characters by a fairly wide margin are the dead guys in Lyle's head. They actually have personalities, and goals, and regrets, and they feel somewhat like real people. All told, I think that the characters in "Sevens" are better than the ones in an awful lot of Japanese fantasy/isekai webnovels. The problem is that the characterization for most of the cast is still pretty weak. This brings us to the harem where I feel I got sold a bill of goods. I was promised that the harem in "Sevens" has interesting characters with depth who have all sorts of conflicts with one another, and where they don't all accept being in a harem to begin with. End result? "Sevens" has the same kind of chicken-ass harem that you'll see in a ton of other Japanese otaku stories. The harem members are a smidge better developed than in many of these other stories, but it's still just a smidge of difference so it doesn't amount to much. There still isn't much depth to the relationships, and the story wouldn't dream of including anything along the lines of sexual tension. And even though the characters talk about marriage for large chunks of the story, it doesn't happen until the very end, and even the wedding is offscreen so we don't have to actually deal with the consequences. Technically this is all relatively inoffensive, but the bait and switch is extremely annoying. In the end, it doesn't matter if there are a million characters in the harem, if they have super thin characterization and the story isn't interested in doing anything interesting with them, then more is definitely not better. So how does "Sevens" compare to other books at the end of the day? If we are comparing it to the normal Japanese isekai/fantasy webnovel, it's a lot better. It actually has proper world building and characterization and the writer seems to have an idea how to write fiction, and that's already a big improvement. Compare it to actual good books and "Sevens" is going to be found wanting. Its central conflict is not very good and it's not particularly good in any of its elements. And while I haven't read a huge number of Chinese harem novels but those I've read are all a lot better at writing female characters and at building relationships. Overall I'd say that "Sevens" isn't hateful but it's far from outstanding as well.
I dropped Sevens when Novem started acting really creepy I believe it was after the female warrior queen with lots of scars joined the harem and started forming alliances with the other women. The " Mr Lyle" joke got used too much for my taste. It was another excuse to not develop the protagonist's character. Novem was more like a babysitter/ step mom that's a pedophile. The female characters certainly didn't live up to promise To me what makes a good female character is switching the Villainess with the female lead and making the Villainess the female lead. All these angelic -never betrays- sacrifices everything female lead are boring. It's one of the reasons I like Zhao Min, Zhou Zhirou and even Huang Rong. The ancestors were certainly the best part of the story and as they kept disappearing my interest in the story kept disappearing too Sadly, the ancestors might have not been a good thing at the end of the day because they became a crutch that prevented character development for Lyle. I doubt I have wished you, Happy New Year hopefully it is not offensive to wish a Chinese happy New Year when Chinese new year is just around the corner. Cheers!