Death and Reincarnation.Kuroe Makoto, tomboyish ace of her high school track and field club, never spared a thought for these things before. However, when she one day wakes up in a fantasy world, those concepts become her reality. She was reincarnated in her sleep without even knowing the reason for her passing. But unlike in the light novel settings she's familiar with, she didn't become the overpowered protagonist who fights evil and gathers a harem of beautiful girls.Instead, she is reborn as 'Chaos', the child of the demon queen and heir to a kingdom at war with humanity. Demon Princess Magical Chaos puts the Japanese high school girl in a tentacle monster, in this strange tale of a sound human mind possessing a horrifying creature's body.Join Chaos on her oftentimes humorous but also perilous journey through a world of magic and adventure, as she discovers a newfound appetite for life, terror, and demi-human girls.***************************************************************************************************This book was first published in 2018 under Demon Princess Magical Chaos Volume 1 - The Tentacle Awakens by J.J. Pavlov. Meakashi is another pseudonym of J.J. Pavlov.
Writing this as I'm about halfway through book 4 in the series -- I already *loved* book 1, but they've seriously just be getting better and better as they go on, building on what's there, and taking it even further in the best and most unexpected of ways.
This is easily my favorite "character becomes more than human" book I've ever read, and I say as a very heavy reader who didn't much care for transformations like the Dune Sandworm stuff, or the movie 'Lucy' or 'Resident Evil 3' where characters become more than human, and like a switch being flipped, they're just suddenly "above it all."
This book is well written, has *really* fun-to-follow characters, and oh man, it the scale just keeps getting bigger and bigger in ways that make me so excited to see what happens next!
I'm also a *massive* fan of the way our lead spends time introspecting about the various physiological and mental changes that have come with her transformation, examining *why* she feels the way she does, and examining her relation to humanity as she travels with a group of humans while still trying to hide her 'new' identity as a shapeshifting eldritch horror (after also discovering that she's gay as hell, and *very* polyamorous).
I cannot rave about this series enough. It's sooooo good. Easily my favorite thing I've read in years, and I say that having put up good-reads ratings on something like 800 books (large part of that being graphic novels, and light novels, to be fair) in the last year or so.
While I can't say that the "reborn as a monster" isekai genre is entirely original, it does still have new ground to tread, and I think this book is a decent example. Unlike other such stories, which tend to focus more on living as a monster, this one focuses more on hiding among humans disguised as one of them. Perhaps appropriate that the protagonist learns a wolf form early on as well.
The protagonist has interesting development, although it comes in quick bursts rather than being drawn out across the story. One thing I appreciated was the character stopping to take stock of how much her reactions to things had changed. It's one thing to have a monstrous body, but another to become a monster. The supporting characters are developed less, but sufficiently to fulfill their roles.
I was surprised when the book ended, and a little disappointed as I was wanting the story to continue. I definitely plan to read on in the series.
I'm surprised to see how many high rated reviews this has, even more surprised that I could only find two that mention the LARGE amount of paedophilia in this book. Like the MC quite openly lists after very young looking, child like characters. At first it wasn't so bad because she didn't do anything other than say how cute they were etc. But then she meets them young child like dark elf who is supposedly older... However still has a child like mind and at that point of it has a child's body and a child's mind what's the difference?