The Fall 2024 K-Comics Guide

Love is an Illusion! - The Queen (18+)

What's It About? 

Free-spirited Alpha Do-gyeom has finally decided to put her promiscuous past behind her and settle down. As a 39-year-old woman, however, her options for marriage partners have dwindled. Luckily she has her beleaguered Omega secretary, Seung-ah, to do most of the work of finding a suitable match for her. It shouldn't be a problem, even if Seung-ah and Do-gyeom have harbored secret feelings for each other for years. In fact, arranging Do-gyeom's marriage may just be the catalyst for the two of them to finally admit their attraction…unless another Alpha gets in the way!

Love is an Illusion! - The Queen has a story and art by Fargo, with English translation by Lezhin Entertainment, America Localization Team. This volume was lettered by Karis Page. Published by Seven Seas (October 29, 2024).

This K-Comic is intended for mature audiences only.

Is It Worth Reading?

Do you need to have read Love is an Illusion before you pick up its spinoff, Love is an Illusion! - The Queen? I don't think so. Although familiarity with the original will give you a bit more background on heroine Do-Gyeom and her family, this book really reads just fine with only the minimal implied knowledge of Dojin and Dojun, because this two-volume series is all about Do-Gyeom and her secretary Seung-Ah. It's also very, very raunchy and uses the omegaverse in a way that I, a casual consumer, hadn't encountered before: Do-Gyeom is a “dominant alpha,” which apparently in this story means that she has a penis. Nothing I've read indicates that she's trans, although you could read her that way without changing the story.

The surface-level plot is that, having observed her married brothers' bliss, Do-Gyeom is ready to get married herself, and she enlists her (omega) secretary Seung-Ah to help her vet candidates. But what's really going on is that she and Seung-Ah have been in love with each other since they met in college roughly twenty years ago and both of them are having trouble facing up to it. They've disguised their feelings in different ways, with Do-Gyeom sleeping with anyone with omega pheromones and Seung-Ah pretending to be asexual.

That last bit is my one major issue with this volume. Asexual representation is important, and characters like Seung-Ah who pretend to be ace only help confuse the narrative while leaning into the idea that people on the ace spectrum just “haven't met the right person yet” or other such damaging views. I hardly need to remind everyone that asexuality is real and valid, and for what it's worth, no one has ever questioned Seung-Ah's statement, with Do-Gyeom even beating herself up about attempting to seduce him at one point. (And he could still be more on the demi end of the spectrum.) But using it as a disguise isn't great, and it bothered me throughout the book.

For the most part, though, this is a pretty good romance. There's some serious love geometry going on, with Do-Gyeom dating an omega woman named Mina seemingly to spite Seung-Ah, and a third old (alpha) friend, Mujin, clearly having romantic feelings for Seung-Ah seizing his moment and making his move. The road to our leads getting together is incredibly rocky, and their missteps are the right kind of frustrating: we know they belong together, they know they belong together, but they're doing everything in their power to mess things up out of sheer pigheadedness. My one romance caveat is that if you're the sort of romance reader who prefers that their characters only have on-page sex with their romantic interest, this may not be for you, because both Do-Gyeom and Seung-Ah sleep with other people.

As with Seven Seas' other omegaverse titles, this book has a brief preface outlining the basics of the genre, and my only production complaint is that Korean terms “hyung” and “noona” aren't defined for readers who may not be familiar with these sibling forms of address. But beyond those reservations, if you're looking for uncensored full-color action with a plot to back it up, this is a pleasant surprise, and I'm going to need to know how it ends.

I want to shake my past self for thinking a male-female Omegaverse romance wouldn't be interesting. “But we already live in a world where it's possible for women to get pregnant,” I said to myself back then. That may be true, but I forgot that in the Omegaverse, some women can get men pregnant. Love Is An Illusion! The Queen is a story about exactly that kind of woman. It's a spin-off of the author's previous work about a BL Omegaverse couple. Do-Gyeom is the alpha older sister of the previous protagonist, and now it's her turn to find an omega to love.

Do-Gyeom is pushing forty, focused on her high powered career when she isn't satiating her sexual appetite with a revolving door of omega one night stands. To be clear, she has a dick, and it's a dick the reader gets very well acquainted with between these pages. Don't make any assumptions based on her anatomy though: Do-Gyeom identifies as a cis woman, and cis (alpha) women look a little different in the Omegaverse. But after her little brother starts a family, she considers that it might be time for her to settle down, too. It's obvious her heart isn't in it though; she's too busy in the boardroom and the bedroom to take this seriously. Instead, she leaves it to her hapless omega secretary Seung-Ah. Despite the fact that he is a handsome young omega and exactly Do-Gyeom's type, Do-Gyeom has never touched him because she believes Seung-Ah is asexual and uninterested. However, it would be more accurate to say that Seung-Ah is demisexual: even though he doesn't seek out casual sex like his boss, he's obviously been harboring a massive crush on her for decades. Their burgeoning romance is told in a full color soap opera style, as miscommunications and interfering suitors for both romantic leads hinder them from finally realizing the inevitable.

Even though this is technically a hetero romance, BL manhwa fans will recognize this comic's familiar beats, from a “sick fic” in which one character must be nursed to health by the other, and the emergence of a second alpha lead. While it relies on the most traditional of romance tropes, this story about a physically imposing female pursuing a short-statured, pretty male love interest is anything but old-fashioned. I've always wondered about the many potential roles of women in the Omegaverse, and this story answered so many of my questions.