MAJOR SPOILERS THROUGHOUT

I wanted to like this so the fact it fails on so many levels is disappointing. Even Lee Dong Wook - and I count myself as a kind of fangirl a isn’t enough to save this unfortunately.

The main thing I liked was the brother bromance and basically Lee Rang as a character, and acted well and a character with depth and layered. I think the story was compelling enough to want to know what happened next, even if there were plenty of plot holes and unanswered questions, especially those last 30 seconds (like, WTF?!) and there was plenty of action to keep it going up.

My main problem with the whole drama is that’s it’s kind of boring. The hero is played with dash and flair by LDW but why do I care about him? He’s all mysterious and all knowing and powerful but suffers from lots of “telling” but little showing. So we keep being told the heroine is his big love. Why? No idea. They float around in period costumes (stylistically they even manage to make LDW look bad by dressing him in red voluminous robes and bad ombré hair) gazing at each other. But what is so special about her that a mountain god falls for a mortal? We see more of the reasons why but not till much later episodes but all the ones before mean I don’t care. Their romance feels rushed and the emotion forced.

He keeps not telling his people he’s meant to care about things - mainly for plot points not because there seems to be a reason to it - so that he didn’t actually try to kill his brother and he actually does love him. And doesn’t tell heroine about their real backstory until we’ve had some mopey noble idiocy (which he gets over pretty quickly and we don’t know why).
The central couple for me lack chemistry so again I don’t really care if their supposed epic love story ends happily or not. Like, I admit I think we are spoiled by LDW and Yoo In Na levels of chemistry in previous dramas but even setting that aside I’m not feeling this. Not even in the bedroom sexy scenes. Sigh.

The side characters are ok - the second leads are cute and their story is nice but I don’t love them.

The boy and villain isn’t very scary, he just feels stroppy. I found the elders a bit annoying until the end. Kudos for cute puppy boy who is seriously cute.

The whole pacing and tone is kind of weird, it takes a lot to juggle fantasy, drama, emotion, romance, humour and a little bit of horror and I’m afraid the times it transitions between these all are clunky.

The main thing I did like though was that it was quite unpredictable, sometimes (though not - ah it’s just started to rain and there is Lee Yeon with his umbrella after wandering in the wilderness of his unconcious ready for a kiss or oh here’s heroine crossing a road so she’s about to nearly get hit by a truck) - but there are some genuine plot twists, though the later one with the wooden sword was one too many - and it’s mainly this curiously over how it ends and how the my resolve the whole evil serpent thing that keeps me going.

The last 2 episodes did wring it out for me a bit and did make me feel, and I did enjoy them but I could have easily not finished it before to get to that point.

But sorry way too many problems for me and I wouldn’t recommend to others - I know lots of you loved it!!