Full disclosure, I DNF, not that it was a horrible story, but a few things annoyed me to the point that I just lost interest.

Fair warning, some examples from the story might be used, so spoiler warning.

First, MC is supposed to be a veteran of a future-past where everything’s that’s happening has already happened and he got tossed back in time to do it all over again. He’s mentally 70+ and the equivalent of a combat veteran with knowledge of various events that are about to happen and his goal is to ensure humanity grows strong enough to get to the metaphorical endgame and actually complete it this time.

So, with that said, you’d likely expect MC to make certain decisions in a smartish way, maybe stop and formulate a plan with backup plans and backup plans to those backup plans. Do you get that? No.

You get a MC that repeatedly makes reckless no thought put in them decisions even if Oster tries to tell you the MC thought about it. Example: MC repeatedly goes into high level areas, that from prior knowledge he should know is a high level area, and repeatedly is “surprised” when he comes across a high level monster that by way of plot armor, MC manages to win the fight….just barely. He kept doing this, over and over and over again in the initial stages of the story.

When I finally started to feel the story was getting its stride after getting over the above and MC finally met another character that he was going to keep with him more annoyances started with that. One is my petpeeve with regression stories where they have a mentally older MC NOT REALIZE THAT HE’S IN A YOUNGER BODY AND STILL ACTS LIKE HE’S IN AN OLDER BODY. Well the MFC at this point was also acting entirely too immature, but I gave it a pass since there was a passing hint that technically both MC (physically from her perspective) and her were not too long out of highschool or just getting into college. Still, some of the “sexual inneudo” that was obviouslly supposed to be cringe was just too cringe and was made even worse by way of MC acting way too super serious and incapable of having a sense of humor. Yes, people can have a moderate sense of humor even during serious times. Military people do it all the time.

From that, we get to MC’s first goal. The hub city of humanity on the alien world. MC comments internally about how the central city (that’s what we’ll call it) will eventually be run by some guy. What’s my issue here? MC would rather wait until later down the line to try to negotiate with this guy to have the guy encourage humanity to get stronger than just take over the city at this point where it’s rulership is vacant and it’s implied that there would be less lives lost in doing it. (Some people on Amazon give way more insight into this problem as it’s connected to the end of the story).

Finally, MC spends way too much time traveling and hunting down former friends from his future-past and people he knew, fought against, or knew about from the future-past rather than making people next to him strong and starting to form a team from the start of strong human allies. So, while forcing himself to travel, others are gaining levels and getting stronger around him and this isn’t even getting into the level inconsistencies.

The story isn’t horrible. I gave it 3 stars despite getting frustrated and not finishing.