by Aiya Kyu, Artist: Aneko Yuagi

5 Stars

This book is told in first-person from Naofumi’s point of view. Naofumi goes to the library to catch up on his light novels and finds this mysterious book about four heroes who save the kingdom of Melromarc from these waves of calamity. As Naofumi flips through the pages of the book, he then loses consciousness. When he wakes up, he finds himself in the kingdom of Melromarc, in a fantasy type world along with three other people: Ren Amaki, Motoyasu Kitamura, and Itsuki Kawasumi. These four are informed that they will help and save the kingdom from these calamity waves, and they will be given one of the Four Holy Weapons. Ren Amaki is given the sword, Motoyasu Kitamura is given the spear, Itsuki Kawasumi is given the bow, and Naofumi Iwatani is given the shield. The fate of this world is now in the hands of these four heroes as they try to save the kingdom. Naofumi thinks that this will be the adventure of his life, but little does he know he will be backstabbed by his only squadmate. He will have to live his life in humility, and now his real adventure starts in this other world.   The book was in first-person because I would sometimes lose track of where I am, and sometimes I am not that engaged since there isn’t a traditional narrator that isn’t in the first-person view. This book is also very cliché that it’s another one of those “isekai” genre light novels, where the main character is transported to another world, most of the time a fantasy world, to save the world from a demon lord of some sort of a villain threatening this other world. This book also has a lot of video game tropes where the characters can pull up a menu to look at like their stats, health menus, and party menus. At first, I thought this was going to be the same “isekai” plot books where a person is trapped in a video game world, trying to go back to their world. But I was wrong. Everything gets flipped, and it turns out that the other three heroes are basically jerks, and Naofumi finds himself screwed over, and eventually he is left to fend for himself in this world. Suddenly we have this “anti-hero Naofumi” where is always angry and grumpy. He’s not like those other main characters of other “isekai” books. Naofumi is a very unique character, which grabbed my attention and pulled me in, and I always thought to myself while reading the book, “what is going to happen to this guy now that the whole kingdom hates him and he is in a very lousy situation.” In the end, this book is interesting. The thing that does surprise you is the main character himself and the other characters around him…   In conclusion, this is a really good and different book from the other “isekai” genre books and I would recommend it to people who like this genre and to people who don’t even read books like these. 

Jirho A.

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