Have you ever read those stories with heroes who knew just how to get things done?
The ones who were masters in five different martial arts, and knew ten ways to skin a bear after killing it with their bare hands?
Yeah, that wasn’t me.
Hell, I had trouble asking a girl out on a date.
But someone in clerical must have made an error. Because I got ripped from an airplane on my way home after my last day in the Coast Guard.
I mean, come on, I wasn’t even in one of the hardcore branches of the military or anything!
On top of that, as soon as I arrived in this new world, I got sent to jail and conscripted.
So, that was fun.
But I found out I was unique. The first human on Camaria to have an affinity for all three of the elements humans had taken from the dungeons.
Fire, Earth, and Water.
Now, I’m being sent to this academy. It’s a place to learn how to be the hero they expect — no, the hero they need me to be. To save humanity and all the other races I guess.
I mean, we all have to start somewhere, right?
Oh, and there is this girl. Okay, maybe more than one…
Anyway, this is my journey. The chronicles of how I went from Mr. Average to the most powerful Hexinblade this world has ever known.
I can’t even properly describe how good this book is.
I can’t even properly describe how good this book is. This is one of the best books I’ve read in this genre. The storytelling and writing quality alone are enough for me to recommend this book. But the real gems here are the characters. The MC is a good blend of being a good person but also being confident and strong to not let people walk over him. He is also smart and has good decision making skills. Then comes romance aspect. Man does this author know how to write in a way that the feelings of everyone involved come out and feel real and genuine. That brings me to the MCs first love interest. She is quite possibly my favourite love interest in this entire genre. She just melts your heart with every interaction, and not in a cringy way. I don’t want to give anything away but if there’s one book you need to take a chance on, it’s this one. I hope the next one in the series comes out sooner rather than later, I would drop whatever I was reading at the time for it.
Oh my god. I got nearly halfway through and I think he had a) fallen out of a plane, and b) walked down a street. The rest was just jabbering, jabbering, nothing but jabbering. Why is everyone so verbose? Why does every description go on for a couple of paragraphs and we have to get his thoughts on it as well? I think there’s an interesting story in there if you can stand the waffling, but I couldn’t.
Gotta be honest this blew me away with how good it is and I’m surprised I’ve not read any of this authors other works. (Guess who’s reading pile just doubled)
So to start: This ain’t a typical book in the genre. It’s bloody awesome, and more of a progression style than Litrpg as is typical with the Isekai’d genre. As for the romance etc, again this is written in such a way that it comes across as much more well developed than typical and honestly, this reminds me more of the starts you get in high-fantasy epics. Just with bonus harem thrown in. Mate honestly it’s a win win here ;)
The good: Pretty well everything tbh. The style of writing is very descriptive- more on that below- so as a result we get bloody great characters and Mc development. -Freaking good MC man Great plot and story- more below tho on plot development. Good romance so far- only a but towards the end atm but clearly going well along Interesting magic system- interested to see how it progresses The writing-top quality. So nice to read and flows well. Succeeded in keeping me reading thru without stopping and questioning something every 5 mins.
The less good but still good: A bit of a double edged sword here but the descriptive writing. -There’s a fine balance between going too far and getting lost in the details, and knowing when it’s just enough to get the point across and move on. For the most part it’s done very well and flows smoothly into the story. However as a couple other reviews noted- there is some places where to does wander a little bit too much- but honestly it’s not big noticeable thing for me. And the only other thing I could mention which is another double edged sword is that, again as someone else has said, it does feel that although it’s a full book with plenty packed inside, plot progression was quite slow. Only 3 days passed in the book and it’s probably could’ve done with a little more progression. -The only reason I bring this up is because the way the book reads, it feels like this is, as I said earlier, the start of an epic type book (ie, a long series with complex stuff happening all the time) which raises some concern as to how that’d be managed as that can be very challenging. However I could see that being rectified with some appropriate time skips at certain points, depending on how the story develops.
Honestly by the length of this review you can tell it’s gotten me invested in the start of this new series, so I’ll leave it at this:
It’s bloody good so just read it, and give it an honest review.
Pretty fun book, I breezed through it in a couple days. The world-building is great. Character interactions between the cast were well written. I actually really enjoyed the different POV chapters from the love interests, their attraction to the MC was very believable. This is definitely book 1 of a series because a lot is being setup here. Mr. Underwood you better put out the sequel soonish!
Minor qualms: As someone who reads a lot of books in this genre and has watched more than his fair share of isekai anime, some of the tropes of what Cal (the MC) was going through were a little tiring. I think that's more about me than the book though. Examples - Cal has some translation problems, he keeps mentioning stuff from his original world, his appearance doesn't fit in with the locals.
DNF - Could not stand the protagonist, or the endless repetitive whining about everything. Every attempt to sound "clever" just seemed like the most ridiculous middle school angst-ridden nonsense. Made it about 20% of the way into the book and had yet to encounter anything that fun or interesting and just tapped out.
No magic to speak of, no interesting characters and terrible dialog, often copied and pasted into multiple pages and chapters. Save yourself the time, skip it.
This is the first book by this author that I read. My husband had read his other books and followed the author. Got a reminder on Alexa a new book was out and put it on our wishlist. I read the blurb and decided I had to try it out. The book was so good. The MC really made me laugh and the story flowed nicely. I literally read it cover to cover the same day. I'm happy that I now have several other of the author's stories to go read.
This story has a lot of things going for it. Good anti-hero, supporting cast is well thought out, the plot.line has excellent potential - although it has the feel of a more massive series than maybe the author intended. Still, lots of fun, good expectations and goals. Really looking forward to the rest of the series!
Decient start to a new harem series. However, as much as I enjoyed the characters, I wish there'd been a little more detail and in-depth on the powers of this new world. Seems like a form of cultivation. The MC has been handed everything so far. I would like to see him earn some status and power himself. The book over all. Was enjoyable and funny.
Harem genre so be prepared for explicit sex. All in all a very pleasant surprise for my 1st experience with this author. Good plot line, well developed and consistent background culture. Extremely good characterization & POV development. Normally I don't like frequent POV switches but exceptionally well done in the book. I'll definitely be buying the next one in series.
Great read! The only thing I didn't care for was it's a very slow start. I appreciate the details, but you don't have to give so much specific detail to describe the every single thing the mc sees. I understand why you did. People have an imagination that can help.
Picked up this story from KU. Didn't think it would be this good. We established magic system. Well thought out so far with lots of possibilities. And I didn't notice any grammatical error ( rare with KU). The next story can't come soon enough.
Just couldn't deal with the MC, bailed about 50 pages in. Seemed overall cowardly and immature compared to his 24 years and 6 years of Coast Guard. Maybe that sort of person makes up the CG, but I doubt it irrespective of ribbing from the US Army and Navy. Not worth my time.
I really enjoyed reading this book. It was fun and entertaining. The story and characters were incredibly interesting and engaging. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next. This book is definitely worth checking out.
The first 20 CHAPTERS are about 80% info dump about the world, characters, magic system, and crisis, but, if you can get past that, the story starts to get fun. Hopefully we have enough background for the next book to be more focused.
A good start to the series. The main character is an interesting person. He does not come into this new world knowing everything. He needs to continue to grow.