Tak wakes up at the end of a large battle which his group of mercenaries lost badly. He got knocked on the head and now he doesn't remember anything.
It's twenty something years after the apocalypse happened, and no one wants to talk about it anymore. They're all talked out. Electricity is a thing of the past, and ether has now appeared (gamers call it mana). Humanity has regressed to a semi-feudal system of city-states, with the wilds in between the cities left in shambles.
After a lot of work repairing his body, Tak is eager to get back and do some more missions. He doesn't remember his old life, but since there is nothing he can really do about it, he wants to move forward.
So.... they take a mission.
I'll stop there. This is an interesting, and perhaps more realistic take on an apocalypse. Statistics don't appear in the corner of your eye here, you need a special device which only nobles have. As mercenaries, they take the jobs they can get their hands on. Some are good, and some aren't.
From there we watch Tak start to increase his abilities, not just internally but with his swords.
This felt like a dark, gritty story to me. Tak and the team of mercenaries are well developed, and the story world is sketched out well. It almost feels like we skipped book one of what happened during the apocalypse and moved on to post apocalypse life. The story is very linear, although the first 16% is harder to get through simply because we don't know what's happening.
Stick with it. It gets better. The ending was odd, and while I won't spoil it, I came up with a couple different alternative endings. I get why it ends the way it does because of the setup for book 2, but still.
The notifications are few and far between because it requires a special device. The editing is excellent.
Recommended 5/5*