An Unruly Summon: Volume 1

An Unruly Summon #1

by Cathfach, NegativePrimes (Editor), Kurodeko (Illustrator)

The summoning of otherworldly heroes is a dangerous gambit for King Edward Ricousian–heroes show up with ridiculous cheat powers and wild ideas about “human rights” and “justice for commoners.” But with demons on the verge of overrunning his starving kingdom, he chooses to roll the dice, and ends up saddled with Thomas Smith. The king and his advisors hope to control Thomas by setting him up with a “harem” of beautiful, deadly young women and carefully manipulating his perception of the war, hiding his country’s wrongdoings and painting their foes as evil monsters. But Thomas isn’t the kind of person who lets anyone control him. Can a normal guy from Earth cut through the lies to find out what’s really going on–and when he does, will anything be left standing?

A First Prize winner in the first-ever J-Novel Club Original LN Contest!

Genres: Light Novel

375 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 25, 2025

Reviews

[Yev · Rating 4 out of 5]

After I read a couple pages it was obvious that this wasn't translated. An Unruly Summon was a First Prize winner of J-Novel Club's Original Light Novel Contest 2024. The winner received $3,000 and a publishing contract. The Grand Prize was $15,000. J-Novel Club is owned by Kadokawa, a major Japanese conglomerate.

A human kingdom has been invaded by demons and both the elves and dwarves have refused to help. Out of sheer desperation they use their last resort, summoning a hero from another world. That means they've kidnapped some guy from Earth and their deities have made him overpowered. Over the centuries the royal family has learned what a disaster this process can be, so they've devised an elaborate plan to manipulate him into doing what they want by having him believe that it's all his choice. If that fails, there's guilt tripping, admiration, and offering a harem. They couldn't account for Thomas Smith, a 19 year physics student (the author has a PhD in physics), would be so genre savvy about isekai stories. Thus begins the contest of wits and wills between the royal family trying to trick him and Thomas trying to learn all he can without his fanboy spirit getting in the way.

The story is told from a first person perspective and from a third person perspectives for all others. This isn't a typical isekai story. Thomas isn't interested in any of their manipulations and is very suspicious of their intentions, but figures that if he can Make The World A Better Place he may as well try. If royal family was right about anything, it's that those from Earth have a sense of moral superiority about their culture, especially about slavery. There's a bit of social and political commentary. The women of his intended harem are nude at times, but nothing sexual occurs.

Magic is categorized by color in a way that reminds me of Magic The Gathering's mana. For the protagonist, the magic is emotion-based, reminiscent of C.S. Friedman's Coldfire trilogy. Spells are required to be spoken, for which Latin is used, and are modified by adding words. For everyone else, magic involves complicated mental imagery, components, and much hard work.

Cathfach says that Terry Pratchett is their favorite author. The humor here is being meta about isekai conventions and power fantasy in general. The theme seemed to be that with great power comes great consequences, often unintended. There's a focus on the collateral damage caused by immense power that's not fully understood or controlled. In other words, there's a fair bit of tragedy, which is handled well enough.

I enjoyed this more than I expected, though I don't how much that was because of personal appeal. It may also be because it seemed to be roughly equally influenced by Anglo and Japanese fantasy. This first book is mostly a self-contained story. As for its length, Cathfach currently expects this to be a trilogy, which I plan to read.

Rating: 3.5/5

[Pieter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely a different take on the isekai genre, neither too dark nor light-hearted (no real challenge) and with interesting characters that have their own motivations and quirks beyond the typical isekai (anime) tropes. The character makes mistakes and those mistakes have painful consequences, and the epilogue adds a twist that makes me look forward to volume 2. The downsides of the story are the potential OPness of the MC which is always difficult to pull of in a more serious story which makes me a bit weary of what is to come. The world itself also feels a bit odd, leaving me wondering why any god would let things go this bad, but we might get an explanation for this in future volumes. All in all, I can see why this series is the first prize winner in the JNC contest and thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

[Dre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished the final chapter and it’s left me feeling excited for the second volume. As typical with the isekai genre, our main character is indeed OP and blessed by the gods. But he’s also a fairly reasonable human being who ends up truly caring for those close to him. And there are moments where this character trait becomes part of the conversation in a fun, meta fashion. The story develops in a rather unpredictable fashion which was refreshing and the climax of the story was wonderful and surprising. Without spoiling the story, I would highly recommend this one!

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished reading An Unruly Summon Volume 1 and it was a great story. The jokes in the book are meta commentary on the whole light novel story line. I totally recommend this book to anyone who's getting bored of generic light novels stories. The characters have personality and are not so Boring 2D characters. They are some small plot holes in the story, I want get in to it because of spoilers.

[Alejandro Mourra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is interesting not bad not really good but the plot look promising

[Idk Man · Rating 5 out of 5]

ts pretty good