The story, narration and creativity of this book are its main selling points. I think when it comes to isekai type stories there are so many that for their to be some pretty novel stuff in this one is a major accomplishment. While there are a few things in the story that are kind of hand-waved (atleast in this first novel) the structure of the universe and the world our main characters find themself on is pretty fascinating from a worldbuilding point of view. There are some stock standard isekai stuff but its mostly glazed over, which i think is better. The book focuses on the parts that distinguishes itself, and does so well. Another thing i really appreciate is that for the most part, fight scenes aren’t overdone or too long. So many books have this issue where there are too many similar fights that take much too long.
All of this is kind of marred by the fact we are told the two main characters are friends. They don’t feel like it. They feel more like “friendly” work colleagues. One of them constantly ribs the other, and needles him and it clearly makes the other mad. And i just don’t see where the one being needled gets any sort of actual friendship from the other. They spend alot of time bickering and needling each other which is something friends can do, but i don’t ever really see them actually… being friends?
That’s my major complaint with the book, i suppose. Otherwise i cannot state how interesting a first dive into this universe is. I think there’s alot of stuff here handled extremely well, and i am very interested to see where the books go from here.