Enough with This Slow Life! I Was Reincarnated as a High Elf and Now I’m Bored: Volume 5 - I liked this volume the most so far. The general pacing is greatly improved with a lot happening in Acers life without feeling either too rushed or too slow. Whenever I felt a story beat was coming to a halt the story moved on a couple years to the next event. What I was missing a bit here were some side characters that MC could grow closer to like in previous volumes. Right now he’s keeping everyone at arm’s length and I don’t see any emotional payoff coming with the current set of barely introduced side characters. That could be remedied in the next volume though, going by the plot hook at the end. - 7/10
The Exiled Noble Rises as the Holy King: Befriending Fluffy Beasts and a Holy Maiden with My Ultimate Cheat Skill! Volume 1 - I could write pages about how shit this LN is. It starts with as cliche a premise as it gets. Young kids get their special skill (yup, complete with gamelike stats and a magical touch screen display) appraised by the church at a certain age and our MC got one the church didn’t like. His family promptly kicked him out and left him to die in a monster-infested forest. This trope is so common by now that I’m starting to think that I am the strange one for thinking I would protect my kids against whomever. Anyway, it turns out the skill is the titular “ultimate cheat skill” so MC is just a-ok. Not 2 pages later MC saves a tiny kitten from some goblins and lo and behold, that kitten turns out to be an exceedingly strong monster who obviously is now MC’s tamed killing machine. No, noooo. Stop it! Don’t question how measly goblins that could been defeated by the weakling MC were able to nearly kill that mega monster kitten… Anyway, the plot dictates and the plot gets. And the plot now wants an enslaved love interest that hopelessly falls for MC (and a psycho yandere no less). At least you get what’s advertised on the package. What wasn’t part of the title though was that the system governing the game-like skills constantly contradicts itself whenever the plot demands. Speaking of plot demands, our MC sics the monster kitten on some monster and kills it just because. In the same chapter, he gains some more tamed murder machines and then decides to go hunt the same type of monster again. But suddenly there is a page about how he is way too weak to go hunt those monsters. Like did he forget that he just killed one of them as an afterthought? How can he suddenly be too weak to hunt that type of monster when he gains more tamed monsters and got stronger? It’s sooooo much inconsistent bullshit. Midway through the author forgot their own major plot points about why the church hunted after MC in the first place. It started because the Pope had the same skill as MC and there can be only one person having it which would doxx the Pope as a fake. At a later point, the explanation is that MC is the first person with the skill in history and nobody knows anything about the skill. Another example is how sometimes our MC indiscriminately murders peaceful monsters to gorge himself on their flesh (he even got a skill for that), and at other times he waxes on and on and on about his morals about not killing other equally peaceful monsters (just before immediately attacking and forcefully subjugating them). Morals. Yay. - 1/10
The exiled noble… sounds like some sort of a fever dream
You have no idea… Here’s a excerpt where the author forgot what he was writing within just a few paragraphs (bolded parts by me):
But Aht told me, “At the very least, there’s nothing written on the emergence of a Holy King skill in the Church’s history books. It’s not just rare; you are the first known case, Master Noah. That is likely why there’s no available information. If even one other person had ever possessed it, I’m certain there would have been an investigation.”
“Not even one? That’s incredible. I figured it was rare, but I didn’t realize it was that rare.”
No wonder the Church was coming after me just for having it. I’d been certain that the skill was uncommon, but I was astonished to hear that it was the first case in history. There were lots of skills, many of which were considered rare. But all of them had historical precedent or other current holders. I’d never heard of a skill that was completely unique to one person.
“However, it may just happen to be that there are no surviving records. Humble as I am, I was formerly a Holy Maiden positioned considerably high within the Church. Therefore, I have privileges to access almost all of the Church’s documents. The only exceptions would be any records in the closed archives, which only the Church’s Holy King may access.”
It’s insane how he can go from “the first case [of a Holy King] in history” to there’s already an Holy King in the church with an entire archive that can only be accessed by the Holy King within the span of a single paragraph. And the entire book is full with shit like that. It’s like it was written by an LLM and it ran out of token retention every couple paragraphs.
Combatants Will Be Dispatched!, Vol. 7: God I love this series. It’s so consistently stupid. Belial is a fun addition who actually seems to grow as a result of the whole adventure, but mostly she just caused chaos and trying to wrangle a chaotic situation caused by themselves is where this series shines.
