This book was fantastic. I found it refreshing, I’m sure opinions can vary in this regard, I digress…
First, the concept was awesome. The character development was done right and at a great pace, the pacing brought by fantastic narration.
It must be said that this book is written as if by a very analytical person, oh yeah that’s also a physicist! These negative reviews about this man thinking to himself while COMPLETELY alone on a foreign planet… yeah you’d be doing the same thing. People lack perspective and tend to have negative opinions about the way other people think. Leave them alone, yeah I’ve never been sucked through a portal and crash landed in a foreign planet, and neither has the rest of our planet from what I’ve heard. The way this MC attacks his problems both literally and from an observational perspective is fascinating. It’s hard to understand what the negative reviews are hearing, frankly I can’t wait to download the next one.
Back to the book (sorry adhd), the character gets a bit OP. With no restrictions and an entirely experimental concept of figuring out what magic is on this world, and how it effects him are pretty damn believable. It was refreshing to hear an alternate approach, rather than “he was sucked through a portal and for no reason; it’s a video game” dynamic.
I’m not sure if this is articulating what I actually intended, so here’s a catch all conclusion: the characters were developed very well, believable conversations and situations. The magic system was raw, as if the MC was making it up as he went along (the MC actually does make his own system by himself and with his AI), but given the fact the MC is supposed to have no idea what he is doing with magic; it made sense. The MC being a physicist made the magic discoveries fun to listen to from an admittedly sketchy scientific perspective. That’s on the authors understanding of quantum mechanics, astral physics, mundane physics, thermodynamics, and other mathematical nuances that are hard to verify without actual firsthand knowledge. Other than wildly complicated math that sounded fine, but probably was incorrect; this book hit all the right buttons. All in all: worth the credit, not sure when number two will hit the market, but I’ll scoop it.