DNF @ 50%

Honestly I did not enjoy this at all. There were just far too many issues that I could not get past and I am putting this down.

Starting with the prose. There were just so many gibberish sentences that required a dictionary and the glossary to make any sense of. There were so many Japanese and made up words thrown in constantly that absolutely killed my reading pace. Why are there new words used for simple things like second, minute and hour? Why are there just so many random terms thrown in with no context at all? I’m no stranger to dense fantasy but this was just incredibly frustrating and really killed my enjoyment when I couldn’t understand what the author was even trying to say half the time. And the info dumps were just unbearable. We spent so many pages sifting through the whole history of this area in a “school history class”. Seriously.

The plot and pace were also a huge weakness. The first 1/3 of the book was just incredibly slow and filled with unnecessary dialogue. I don’t need pages and pages of Misaki talking with her infant, or gossiping about other people. I really don’t. The only interesting bit here was Mamoru talking with the new kid and slowly learning about the outside world. Then when things do finally pick up at almost 40%(!) we are then trust into the world’s longest fight scene that clearly was not actually that long in real time (and this was by far the best part of the book).

The only interesting characters were Mamoru and seeing as his idea of the world is slowly shattered by the revelations from his new classmate and his uncle, who is just a badass and cool guy but was definitely barely in the story.

Misaki was just such a letdown. Other than one flashback chapter where she is a total badass, and one moment in present time where she finally does something noteworthy she is just incredibly uninteresting. She spends 1/3 of her time taking care of annoying kids, 1/3 gossiping with friends and 1/3 being horribly abused by her misogynistic and emotionless husband, who she decided to stay with.

Now, personally, my absolutely least favorite trope in fantasy is the archaic gender roles. And so when it became clear at 50% that this story was actually about Misaki and not Mamoru I was ready to put this down.

The only redeeming part of this book was the use of magic in the fight scene. This was what I was expecting from the book, badass fighters and clever interesting characters and their relationships. Not the story of an abused housewife who clearly hates her husband and herself and her children.

Overall I did not like this book. I scoured reviews to see if things improve at all in the second half and based on what I’ve found it only gets worse. So into my DNF pile this goes.