This is one of those books where I can’t help but feel like I’m putting more thought into it than the author did.

The main character is one of those people who is super weak, with basically no magical talent in a world where everyone has magic. Still, he does his best getting by on his intellect and determination.

Then he finds out that everything he knows is wrong, the people he thought where strong are in fact weak, everyone else in the world is basically Goku on steroids, and he actually can learn magic.

There are a lot of problems here though. The main character doesn’t actually act all that intelligently. He makes stupid mistakes all the time, and never does anything that’s very impressive or unexpected. We also have absolutely no idea what he or others are actually capable of – we know basically nothing about the magic in this world. These two things don’t go well together. If you want a character to come across as clever, then we need to know exactly what they can and can’t do so we can be impressed when they use their limited skillset to do something we hadn’t thought of.

There are lots of logical inconsistencies in the world building. At one point the main character explains that he fully expected to kill someone someday. That’s just how life is. Everyone kills someone eventually. If the weakest person in the whole world has an expectation like that.. well, it’s safe to assume most people kill people in this world. Except, that doesn’t really make any sense. They’d all die out in a handful of generations if randomly murdering people was as common as the main character would have us believe.

We learn that basically everyone in the world is ultra-uber strong outside of the main character’s home. There’s no explanation for this, they’re just really weak there. Except their not weak, because they can still snap a normal person in two with a thought and are basically immune to harm. Except their not, because the main character goes on to kill several such powerful people by.. stabbing them. Nothing special, he just stabs them. We were told earlier in the book that the MC could literally go at an “iron” rank person with a spear and he’d be absolutely no threat at all.. yet he kills not only an iron but also a “jade” with nothing more than a dagger.

Similarly, we’re told that these people are super strong. Golds are capable of literally cutting boulders into blocks with their bare hands. Yet, the MC is hit by irons, jades, and I think even a gold (that might have been book 2, not sure) and never suffers serious injury. Except for that time he got hit and his chest basically exploded, leaving him as a pile of goo and limbs on the ground. See what I mean though? Inconsistencies everywhere.

Ultimately, even with these books being free on Audible I just can’t justify the time to continue listening to them. Finished book 1, barely started 2 and my frustrations are already making it more of a chore to listen to than an enjoyable experience.