I feel like this was a 3 in one deal. The first part sets up the story, Builds up the characters, the world and magic system. The second part is the “war.” It was almost cinematic the way it was written. My goodness, Wang knows how to write a fight scene. Plot armor? Forget it, these characters go through hell and you feel it. The 3rd part is the aftermath, grief and rebuilding. It is a rollercoaster ride with these characters start to end. I loved that we got narration from 2 people. Just when I thought this was going to be a typical child prodigy protagonist who can seemingly do anything… He’s not. The other narration is one of the adults who is deeply flawed and fascinating to follow. The fight scenes were so vividly written. It’s not like 2 pages and the fight is over. It is the whole middle section of the book. If you like epic fight scenes that last then this is the book for you!
Issues I had with the story are minor. The pacing was a bit off in places. I think the second chapter was a long flashback thrown in just when we were getting to know Mamoru. It was a weird place for it because the flashback establishes the setting for the outside world while we are still getting to know the small secluded town Mamoru lives in. It’s an important flashback but it’s long. It just felt in the wrong place. The final few chapters had some jumps in it where it could have been fleshed out a bit more.
The narration. Ahh~~ Well, Andrew Tell did a great job reading this. I would definitely listen to his narration again. Amazing voice and easy to listen to. However, whoever produced this audiobook didn’t properly prepare Tell for the language issues. It’s clear Tell does not speak any of the languages in the book. It seems like he gave it his best shot but they really should have given him a coach. As someone who is familiar with Asian languages I can say it didn’t really take away from the story since the way Tell reads it is like a completely new and unrecognisable language. (I don’t know, I just had a good laugh trying to figure out what he was saying) What was said gets explained in English, so It didn’t bother me that much. Things that are repeated throughout the book though, things like Tou-sama and Nee-sama should have been properly explained to him and checked. I found myself detaching and joking that Takeru’s son calls him Two because he’s the second born and doesn’t deserve the respect, and Misaki’s Brother calls her Ni-sama because she acts more like a brother than a sister.
I just read this series was discontinued… for now. Hopefully, once they have grown more as an author, Theonite will be back.