Get Away for the Summer with July Catchups!

myskaros

Tired of running around outside? Going on roadtrips? Swimming at the beach? Well, J-Novel Club has just the thing for you to enjoy while relaxing indoors with the AC on full blast!

Watching the new anime airing this season? If so, you can read past the anime with these catchups! When an office worker dies and finds himself in a world of magic, he decides to try going to safe route: become a healer to minimize the chances of a second death! But will things really go as planned? Find out in The Great Cleric! And in Sweet Reincarnation, an unfulfilled pastry chef reincarnates as the hier to a local lord in a medieval fantasy world. He has to learn to fight and cast magic as part of his studies, but he also can't forget his dreams from his previous life. See if his desserts can bring smiles in this new world!

What happens when a tabletop RPG fanatic is asked to save the world? Of course, he wants to build an invincible character first! Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World follows the adventures of Erich as he executes his decades-long plan to power-level while trying to keep his story from going too far off the rails in the process! Looking for lower stakes? You can read all about working at a Sorcerer's Guild! In The Sorcerer's Receptionist, Nanalie must attend a prestigious academy filled with the children of nobility in order to achieve her dream of becoming a receptionist at the guild, but she'll find that her experiences there will follow her even after she's made it! Finally, let me use this excerpt from the afterword of our final catchup series to hook you:

Editor: “We’re thinking about doing something with a Shin Godzilla vibe.”
Author: “Boy, no way that’ll flop in today’s industry.”
Editor: “That’s why we need a trendy hook. Say, isekai. Instead of Godzilla, there’s an empire invading from another world. Problem is all of our authors keep running away every time we run the idea by them.”
Author: “So, what if the setting was a ruined Japanese archipelago, like, half of it’s underwater. And a bunch of scientists and monks of Esoteric Buddhism, like straight out of Ura-Koya, escape to Mount Hiei or Koya or something, where they develop a super cyborg hero hybrid of science and magic! And it’s a big, magical, cyberpunk action fest.”
Editor: “Yeah, that sounds good. Go with that.”
Author: “What.”

Check out Fantasy Inbound now!

JNC members can catch up on 30 volumes this month; better make time between your other summer activities for them!

the green death

@myskaros Pretty much every one sounds interesting. Curious to hear what others recommend so I can maximize my reading time on the ones I’ll enjoy most!

topgnu

@the-green-death TRPG stands head and shoulders above the lot, in terms of author competence and subject knowledge, author depth of thinking, quality of writing, engaging characters and subject, world building, and probably others too. It is a not to be missed novel.

Cleric is decent. I have been waiting for a while for it to be in catch-up so that I can read V9 and 10 that I did not manage to finish when they were available.

IDK about the others but from the peek at their descriptions it looks July is the month when I'll be catching up on viewing some anime series.

geetop

I read the first two volumes of The Great Cleric and never finished the third. I think something better came along to read and I never got back to it. It was fine but some thing like a Loner's Life would make me switch series etc.

Based on @topgnu recommendation above for TRPG that is where I will start. Looks like that would be about 3 Parts per day to get the last volume up to date. I probably losing a week of reading since my grandkids are here this week so I suspect I will fall short.

I may give Receptionist a shot if I have no hope of catching up to TRPG.

Zakrhune

Been curious to read Great Cleric so I'm happy that's on catchup.

Might try to read TRPG, but honestly the vitality glorifier part was super off putting. So I hope it more or less vanishes. I just find that the series that champion the anti-loli stuff are almost always the worst offenders. Honestly, it's why I've actually been enjoying series where the lead is a female. Tends to be less to none of that stuff.

The other series I'll check out, but I'm not holding my breath for anything amazing here.

rsog412

@Zakrhune - The vitality glorifier wraith in TTRPG...

spoiler

Travis Butler

I've read 3 out of the 5:

Agree with the others, Min-Maxing is by far the best-written and best-plotted, and really gets the tabletop gamer's mindset. (To be fair, a friend of mine really liked the first couple of volumes but claims the later volumes have gotten away from the conceit; early on there's a lot of focus on crunch and detailed character mechanics, and he apparently views that as essential to the concept.)
Great Cleric... I enjoyed the first few volumes, because they were focused on him building his skills through training and hard work. Later volumes slide more into 'high-powered protagonist pushes his way through various social conflicts', which doesn't work nearly as well.
Sorcerer's Receptionist I liked the main character's enthusiasm and skill, I liked the way she focused on chasing her dream and not what other people thought she should do, and I liked the point that support jobs are still important and a lot of work. I mostly enjoyed her school rivalry that extended out into working life, but not so much the sometimes patronizing attitude on his part.

Zeteni

I'll join the pile of folks recommending Min-Maxing my TRPG as it is in my top three series overall. Top quality prose, world building, characterization, and the only series where the fights are described so vividly that I have zero trouble creating an image of how they flow in my imagination. (That never happens.)

Great Cleric didn't resonate with me but I'm glad to have another shot at Sorcerer's Receptionist and with only three volumes it's not so daunting.

Zakrhune

@rsog412 Yeah. It wasn't just her. The sexual "tension" between the reincarnated MC that is mentally like 20 to 30 and the forever 12 year old is still creepy. Then other young characters being into the MC. Tired of reading about MCs that're basically 30 being into 15 year olds.

jpwong

Guess I can go ahead an re-read Sweet Reincarnation. I do really like it, but I've been a bit hesitant on the whole manga thing because google books doesn't really handle manga ebooks well.

MasterLillyclaw

Min-Maxing is one of several I fell behind on when I was busy for a bit, so I’m happy to have the chance to catch back up on it!

As for stuff I’ve read, I actually didn’t mind the slow pace of Great Cleric’s early volumes, but after volume 5 I wasn’t feeling how the plot had progressed… I do miss Luciel’s horse though ngl.

And Sorcerer’s Receptionist is one I really like a lot, I just find it very enjoyable haha. To give my usual spiel on it for those on the fence, “this isn't a story of one-sided bullying - it's mutual antagonism.”

GeorgeMTO

I do heavily recommend TRPG, but enough other people have commented on it that I want to make sure people don't just skip over the Sorcerer's Receptionist too. It's a fantastic 3 volume fantasy/romance series that has been complete for several years... also v4 begins prepubs later this week, so even if you read it before it might be a fun refresher. (author has been writing the sequel webnovel for years, but slowly, JP publisher has decided to just keep it in the same series it appears).

the green death

Thanks to everyone’s advice here I’m going to focus my time on TTRPG and Sorcerers Apprentice.

topgnu

I've gone through half of the first volume of The Sorcerer's Receptionist, and I find it - in a word - underpowered. There's the exceptionally good double scene of the MC leaving her room, once for school and once for work - but that's it. Everything else reads like superficial exposition.

Did I miss something? Someone set me straight if so.

kuali

@topgnu Several of the 'inconsequential' bits that show up in the first half of Volume 1 become more plot relevant in Volume 3. You've got a couple of books of mostly fluff to get through before they start to pay off, though.

Personally, I found the series pleasant enough, but unsatisfying.

spoiler

Travis Butler

@kuali said in Get Away for the Summer with July Catchups!:

@topgnu Several of the 'inconsequential' bits that show up in the first half of Volume 1 become more plot relevant in Volume 3. You've got a couple of books of mostly fluff to get through before they start to pay off, though.

I suppose it depends on what you call “fluff”. Like I said, one thing I like about the series is that it gives support roles some time in the limelight - it’s not just the front-line adventurers who are important, but also the people who evaluate requests and match them with the right teams. (Something I also liked about Middle-Aged Businessman, Arise in Another World!, though sadly it got shut down without a satisfying ending.)

Personally, I found the series pleasant enough, but unsatisfying.

spoiler

Same thing here, to a degree. Natalie isn’t a “faux” action girl, because her job isn’t being an action girl. Her dream was to be the receptionist she met as a child, the clever one who was competent and knew what was going on and had the right answer for all the adventurers who need an effective Mission Control. A problem solver, not an ass-kicker.

spoiler

Geezer Weasalopes

...And no one comments concerning Fantasy Inbound.
It's dark.
Really really dark.

And the snippet from the author's afterward to the first volume hits it on the nose; they told him their idea, he could tell precisely why everyone they pitched it at ran away screaming, figured he'd toss something back so esoterically off-the-wall and unmarketable that they'd ditch the entire idea...and they loved his proposal and hired him on the spot.
At which point he had to write the thing.

I finished the first volume.
I've purchased the rest, but not yet gotten around to reading them because your mind has to be in a very strange place to get into it, and my mind hasn't been there.
I think it's well written, and the translation team did a bang-up job with it.
But it's not for everyone, and even when into it...your mind needs to be in the proper headspace.

xdrfiredogx

I'm shocked at the apparent lack of love for Sweet Reincarnation.

It's a bit like AoaB in the sense that the series is actually way deeper than you'd expect from the premise. You'd expect that he spends most of his time trying to bake and convince others to try new foods, ala Cooking with Wild Game but it's actually got a lot of politics and world building going on. Not just figuratively but also literally... a big part of the series is he and his father having to figure out how to settle and develop this barren area they have been given for a settlement, to accomplish his dream of building a land of sweets. And then on top of that you add on some magic and fighting for good measure.

It does help that he was born into this world and is very attached to his family and this world here, not his old world and whatever family he had there. Him being reincarnated also gives him knowledge, but doesn't actually make him OP in any usual way.

Oh, and did I mention that our adorable little baker is named Pastry Morteln? His father is Lord Casserole Morteln, of course, and along the way he meets the equally adorable Lady Licorice.

Seriously, half the name in the series are food puns! 😁

topgnu

@Geezer-Weasalopes said in Get Away for the Summer with July Catchups!:

And no one comments concerning Fantasy Inbound.

I'll bite. I opened it, saw mechas, I did a 180 degrees. End of story.

saidahgilbert

@Geezer-Weasalopes The synopsis just feels too grim dark for me to try. I just finished the latest Monster Tamer volume so my quota for grim dark is full. I can only handle one grimdark series at a time and Monster Tamer is still ongoing so...