This was a rather chill slice-of-life adventure focused on Sophia's background and current party relationship development. We also get some world building with more formal introduction of current world powers, as well as some MC-related issues being resolved.
Vol. 5 was a clean break from the running story arc, and this volume is a clear dangling bit in-between, or maybe a weakly connected start of a new arc. It wasn't bad, but it's certainly a bit weaker on the pacing and story progression.
So, this is a penultimate intro volume where current and past narrative threads are finally coming together. All the reincarnations are introduced and explicitly mentioned. All of them meet in one place, and clear up their stance with each other in this new world.
Now we can finally start the adventure and story lines that move the actual plot point forward, instead of jumping all around trying to flesh out the world and character motivations.
Our spider MC finally achieves the evolutionary goal she set for herself early on, and it would be interesting to see what's her current development would look like.
All in all, I find it a sweet spot to stop for a break.
The fourth volume is finally seeing the pacing running full steam ahead. Things are happening all the time now, lots of revelations, and even a major plot twist in the middle.
We are finally getting some info on administrators, and we finally meet the demon lord (chronologically). And the spider is almost ready to evolve into arachne.
There's not much time jumping, so that's nice. But the author is still actively hiding the identity of the mc in previous life. And even when by the end it's easy to put 1 and 1 together, it's not as straightforward as it seems. And it really bugs me, so I hope this inconsitency/deliberate misleading/whatever will be resolved without some kind of deus ex machina pulled out of author's ass.
Kobo edition as were previous two volumes, still has some punctuation done with the low-res images. Ugh. Thankfully, it stops here, and I haven't seen anything suspicious in Vol. 5.
So, this is when the narrative pacing is finally hitting the stride. No more monotonous aimless wandering in one locale. Splitting the chapters among multiple points of view helps with variety, and the protagonist is finally hitting that overpowered trope levels.
My biggest issue with the storytelling so far is how the author moves the time line between chapters without warning. Like you think it's happening at the same time frame as the previous chapter, but then there's a casual mention that one of the reincarnation has just been born. It's often hard to pinpoint exactly what is happening when.
The skill tables are getting out of hand, so it's at this point where I started to automatically skip them (as per usual with this genre).
Kobo edition is once again using low-res images as punctuation that's already in common Unicode code points, so I had to fix epub myself (same goes for Vol. 4, but then it seemingly stops after that). Also fun fact, apparently first edition of Vol. 1 was tagged as French all throughout the book, which is funny.
Thankfully, the second volume picked up the pace. There's still a climactic battle at the end as you might expect, but it's much more dynamic, and doesn't drag on like in the first volume.
There are convenient new monsters in ascending power levels introduced throughout the journey, but overall, there's less variety of situations, or skill applications. But it doesn't quite degrade to being boring, thankfully.
The end also leaves MC on the same stratum, so I can only hope it won't be the same endless magma for the third volume as well.
Kobo edition is generally the same, but for once I have complaints. Mild spoilers, but once MC unlocks the Parallel Brains skill, original author starts to delineate various inner brain communications in different parenthesis (which are more varied in Japanese than in English). Yen On decided to reuse the same characters, but didn't bother to embed custom font with these characters to preserve maximum compatibility with super old devices, oh no. Instead, they opted to inline them as low-res images, which are super jarring on modern displays. And even my ancient Kobo Aura has no issues displaying 〘〙 and 〈〉 without any embedded fonts at all.
Like all good isekai novels, the first one or two volumes are the most fun and diverse reads out there, when they introduce you to the new world, main characters, and establishing basic systems.
In that regard, this book is no exception. The twist on reincarnation target, and the skill system is interesting and helps the narrative to move smoothly.
My only complaint is the very last part with the prolonged fight that really put some breaks on the pacing. I really hope it's not the sign that the author ran out of ideas already, and future volumes won't have such dilluted fillers.
Oh yes, if you've seen manga or anime, the book spider is not so cute, and is described to be more realistic-looking. At least for now.
28. GrisTober - Spider
So I’m a Spider, so what? Wasn’t sure if I should draw all four of them but hey they belong together. Somehow. :D
#inktober #inktober2022 #gristober #gristober2022 #ink #traditionalart #traditional #art #fanart #spider #soimaspider #soimaspidersowhat #smallartist #drawing #anime #manga #mangaart #animeart #fediart #mastoart #creativetoots
13xforever
mopani (she/her)