*******Spoilers ahead! You are warned!*****

Using my personal rating system of "loved," "liked," "meh," & "nah," this rates a “liked”. It would have been a “loved” but…that ending!

Things I liked:
This is the first true period fantasy Kdrama I’ve seen. Occasionally there’s a made-up king (like Moon Embracing the Sun, 100 Days My Prince) or even a dynasty (Lovers of the Red Sky), but I’ve never seen a truly made up country/world before in Kdramaland (correct me if I’m wrong). And I loved it. I liked the world-building, the costumes, and even applaud the stylists for making short hair a part of the ‘look’ of that world so they did not have to mess with wigs (though I am a sucker for a guy with long hair…). Nearly all of the characters felt three-dimensional. I liked the bromances—especially with the Crown Prince and the ML. At first, I thought the CP was going to be another evil guy, but he grows on you after a while (he was clearly entitled and arrogant, but he never forced Mu-deok to come be with him and he could have). I wanted to punch the evil dude every time he smirked—which meant he was doing his job right. I loved that Park Dang Gu and Jin Cho Yeon got married despite everyone's objections. I also liked that Jin Cho Yeon only did the awful jealous girl thing for a couple of episodes and then got over it. I hate the jealous bat $*** crazy woman trope and am glad they did not use it for long. I thought they did an excellent job of mixing comedy with seriousness—in the way that real life can be hilarious but also tragic at the same time. I liked the magic system (though outside of ‘soul shifting’ it was not all that well fleshed out).

Things I did not like and/or remaining questions:
Why did you have to do my girl Naksu like that!? Wasn’t the whole benefit of her having taken over a divine priestess body so $*** like that wouldn’t happen? She has been used and manipulated her whole life and then at the end she’s forced to kill the one she loves!? Pfftt, I say! Pfft! Season Two had better make up for it! And why was everyone always going on about how weak Mu-deok was!? She was a slave whose daily life consisted of hard physical labor. There’s even a scene where she’s carrying all kinds of luggage up a mountain. And why would you lose your martial arts ability even if you lost your internal power? You could still fight, but just not with magic. Why did none of the ‘grown ups’ realize that just telling the ML he could not do magic was never going to be enough? That it had the opposite effect? They kept taking the ‘because I told you so’ route—and when has that ever worked? And, seriously, it did not matter whose soul was in Jang Kang’s body when the ML was conceived, it was still JK’s body that did the work meaning that the ML was JK’s biological son. I get why he denied him in the end, to save his life, but it was stupid that he had been denying him since the beginning—and even blaming his wife for somehow not knowing that her husband had been soul switched!? Pfftt, I say! Pfft!

Anyways, slight inconsistencies aside, I loved this up until about the last 20 minutes. Season Two has a LOT to answer for....