Get Away for the Summer with July Catchups!
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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).
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Thanks to everyone’s advice here I’m going to focus my time on TTRPG and Sorcerers Apprentice.
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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.
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@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.
https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/6701/omnibus-builder
https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/5745/ascendance-of-a-bookworm-omnibus-editionsThe Primal Desires: Food, Sleep, Sex, StroZero, Hypnotism, and Awayuki Kokorone.
Item Diaria Apothecaria legi debent.
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@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.
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.
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...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.All your libraries are belong to us. | Those who do not read shall not eat.
Help me, Satomi-san. You're my only hope. | Fight! Yurika!
Croquettes, Baguettes, and Books, oh my! -
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! 😁
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@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.
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@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...
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@saidahgilbert said in Get Away for the Summer with July Catchups!:
@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...
Monster Tamer?
That's not grimdark.
Not compared to Fantasy Inbound at least.Your instincts are good.
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@Geezer-Weasalopes I tried reading Fantasy Inbound when it was first streaming, and it was too dark for me.
It was well written, unlike for example the dumpster fire that Oversummoned turned into, just not the kind of story I enjoy,
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Didn’t seriously look at Sorceror’s Receptionist previously, but thanks to some encouraging comments I decided to give it a try.
I found it surprisingly charming. Despite the dorkiness of the FMC, it still a fun and sweet story. There’s even a Cinderella scene in the first book, complete with glass slippers, though subverted. I’m glad to have given it a chance.
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So I read The Sorcerer's Receptionist in a couple days and I feel about it the same way I feel about The White Cat's Revenge. They both feature romance tropes that I don't really care for.
Next, I tried Min-Maxing My TRPG Build. I was going to quit after volume 1 but the forums were full of background information that I really needed so I may continue for another couple of volumes. From reading this book, I am now more informed of the differences between TRPG and MMORPG. I used to think that they were basically the same thing but one was played on the computer and the other with pen and paper. However, it seems to be a bit more involved than that. I can follow along with worlds based on (MMO)RPGs but TRPG-worlds needed more background information that I didn't have and the book didn't really go too much in depth on that topic (probably because they assumed that people either knew about it because they were gamers or that TRPGs were part of the cultural zeitgeist and therefore common knowledge). -
@saidahgilbert You'll find that as the series continues the TRPG terminology becomes less and less important and that aspect fades a bit more into the background. It never goes away entirely but it's nothing like that first volume.
Read my April Fools prank, Zeteni’s Light Novel Review/s: The Incomplete Anthology! Link: t.ly/EZRn
Featuring about 40 series from JNC.
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@Zeteni Thanks for telling me.
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@saidahgilbert the only MMOs I know of that are akin to TRPGs are Ashrons call, EverQuest and Ultima Online. I'm sure there are a couple of others, but most of the currently popular ones are drastically different.
Still differences, but MMOs used to be a lot more like TRPGs than they are now.
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@saidahgilbert said in Get Away for the Summer with July Catchups!:
From reading this book, I am now more informed of the differences between TRPG and MMORPG. I used to think that they were basically the same thing but one was played on the computer and the other with pen and paper. However, it seems to be a bit more involved than that.
For me, I think the key difference between TRPGs and computer-based RPGs - including MMOs, JRPGs and D&D-based western games like Neverwinter Nights - is that computer RPGs are based on a fixed, inflexible set of rules. What you can do is limited to what's been mapped out by the game devs; clever players can try to exploit edge cases and outright bugs, but there's no way to take an action outside of what's been planned for in the game code.
With TRPGs, if you want to do something that isn't covered in the rules, the GM can think about it and decide what should happen. That allows for a lot more creativity and flexibility.
It also allows for true role-playing. LN's like Dendrogram, Bofuri, Log Horizon, Late-Start Tamer, etc., have AI-based NPCs that can feel like real people, but in real life, that's not the case. IRL, we're nowhere close to AI good enough to successfully do realistic computer-run NPCs; they all have to run off a set of scripted behaviors.
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After everyone giving glowing reviews to TTRPG Build, I will share my thoughts as why I found it lackluster for the first 5 volumes.
The first volume reads waaaaay too much like a straight up rulebook for a TTRPG. You cannot go two to three pages without paragraphs and paragraphs of the author pedantically describing game systems. One of the core tenants that is established in the early volume is the idea of a "build" and how TRPG's have level caps (15 is briefly mentioned in the book, the highest I have seen in a rulebook is 20). This is so that characters have limited power in the games, and so one character sheet can't sweep campaigns. Guess what? The main character suffers no level cap as of yet, which means he has dabbled in full dex builds with attack types, and full on magic builds on top of it (which is impossible to do in any TRPG btw because you run out of skillpoints due to the levelcap if you try anything like this, but the authors love of the genre is apparent).
The author also really likes to cut away from action to talk about some completely different thing that is only tangentially relevant. This is first seen in the first volume near the climax, and I won't spoil it but I would say there are a lot of jarring cuts during intense scenes to low intensity side story-esque content throughout the series that created a lot of tonal whiplash for me.
Now, I mentioned how pedantic the author can be. Let me give an example. So, in many fantasy light novels the first adventure guild quest is usually "gather herbs". This is usually next to no explanation and is generally used to explain adventurer ranks or set up a larger event encounter. Well lets look at how this author approaches it in volume 3 (or 4, I don't quite remember but its around there). First, we learn how mages can grow the herbs with magic, but how wild herbs have different qualities that may be preferable for their qualities. This is never brought up again and has zero impact on any event in the story. There is also a discussion trying to guess what the order placer is trying to craft, as many of the herbs can be used to make alcohol. Next, we talk about the method of travel, and how the horse riding skill works (spoiler, you can ride horses author takes several paragraphs to say this). This is also a comedy scene as the main character rides the horses fine but their friend without the riding skill flails. Then they discuss the nature of potions. What type of potions are used by which economic class of mage, a basic history of potions and their uses, as well as how the potions can be tweaked. But don't worry reader, potions are not really used in the story at all, unless you count the "beauty spell" variant that is not discussed here but is used in later volumes (and are fully explained there in a few paragraphs each). The herbs are gathered with no fanfare or discussion of gathering method.
At about the 5th volume mark the story pacing improves remarkably as the meaningless lore blurbs are cut down considerably. I am enjoying the stories current arc and have it on follow, but it did take a fair amount of time for me to really like it. It is still worth a read, but I don't think it makes it up there with the greats like Tearmoon Empire or Bookworm. Heck, as far as fantasy worlds go I would put Tsukimichi Moonlight Fantasy, Infinite Dendrogram, and Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles squarely above it in writing quality.
I actually enjoyed Great Cleric a great deal more, but I figured I would as I enjoy "Cleric" type stories like Faraway Paladin and The Saint is Omniscient and tend to play healer in class based video games.
Sorcerer's receptionist was pretty fun, and like another commenter noted, it reminded me a lot of White Cat's Revenge in tone. But, it is significantly shorter as the main story is done in three volumes (the fourth volume is a set of short stories set in the world). I never really grew to like the main guy but the rest of the cast was good and had fun interactions. All in all, solid month of catchups.
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Having finished the second volume of Receptionist (with almost no skipping - yay for me, as opposed to the first one), I think I have my finger on what is it that feels off about it. It just reads like the alternative POV story that authors sometimes write to complement their main series. To the point, the story of Alois would have been action, intrigue, and untypical courting (of a girl with layers) novel that I'd love to read.
