I was conflicted on this one at first, but I stuck with it and I’m glad I did. The very beginning is really rough. It reads like a fanfiction written by someone who was never planning on it getting published. The phrasing was kind of clumsy; characters felt underdeveloped, like the author didn’t really know what he was doing with them; and there were frequent uses of internet slang as well as a few scenes that made me immediately think of moments out of a bad anime. I am not really a fan of anime or internet slang in a published book. If that doesn’t bother you then it won’t be as much of a complaint.
After the first hour or so it gets a lot better (well, the aimless characters were a problem throughout. It feels like the author had about 3 or 4 really well developed characters they could write, then threw in a bunch of other cardboard cutouts because there needed to be more characters). Just be warned, the entire first 1/3rd of this book (as in 4 hours) describes the daily life of the main character and the small village he calls home. It does its job establishing the setting fairly well but it didn’t have to be nearly that long. The entire time this is happening there is a huge ominous threat hanging over everything that you as the reader know about from the beginning but none of the characters do. That leads the first part of the book to be very “get on with it!” inducing.
Overall this is 100% not Divine Dungeon levels of writing, but it’s good enough for me to buy the next one and see how it goes. Also, one other warning, this series is surprisingly dark and deals with some issues of psychology I wasn’t necessarily expecting in a story like this. Just know that going in.