Review: Rise of the Weakest Summoner: Volume I
Final Verdict: 2.5/5
Started to write this for Amazon, but realized I didn't really want to post it on amazon.
This review will spoil some plot points, but I’ll try to keep my statements vague.
At first glance, this story mimics a tried and true formula in Japanese light novels.
In the light novel formula, the protagonist starts off as someone who is of lower class but has obvious virtue, often because they work really hard despite appearing to be useless, or being nice to people in situations where they don't need to be nice, something like that. The down on his luck but virtuous individual by pure luck, or because they acted in a virtuous way in a situation that could have harmed them, or because some deus ex god figure recognizes their virtue, or because some deus ex god figure recognizes something about them that they don't know about themselves such as a dark secret. Because of this event, the previously powerless protagonist is granted a sliver of power, with the promise that with hard work more will be granted. Sometimes the protagonist is then introduced to a woman, and they through some contrivance need to spend the adventure together. Over the course of the story, the two grow closer until a romantic finale. In the meantime, the power is expanded upon and although the power is almost always clearly a world-breaker, its limitations are defined, and its mechanics are set up. In the meantime, short term and long term obstacles are established (usually in such stories the short term challenge is something like a boss enemy to be defeated, though sometimes that turns out to be several such challenges in one book depending on how it is structured), and the story is spent pursuing that challenge. The climax of a specific book in a longer arc of a story will be a challenge that seems to push our protagonist to the limit, and shows that despite the power-up the protagonist has received, there are still things out there that can challenge them, so they must continue to grow or they will be defeated next time. The epilogue of the story tends to focus on some of the boons gained by the hero in conquering the challenge and setting up the intrigue for the next book.
I picked up this book frankly expecting something similar to the above, likely written by a Japanese author. It was about half way through that I started to realize this wasn’t a translated work.
It started off small, using clichés that are common from English-speaking writers, such as repeatedly referring to a “wry grin”. Then I started to realize that I was in the middle of a multi-page discussion about consent, and in that moment I realize I wasn’t in Kyoto anymore.
The story starts off more or less like you’d expect given the formula, though the main character is a bit too much of a Marty Stu. He may be the worst summoner, but he’s the fittest, smartest, best student in the entire world, and if only he had more mana! And his weak summon just loved him and couldn’t figure out why he was such a great summoner who couldn’t summon anything, and then his weak summon sacrifices its life for him because he’s so amazing and he gets so mad that he powers up and his hair and eyes change color and he summons the best summon ever that nobody knows even exists and it’s a cute cat girl and she wants to generate new generations of cats the old fashioned way right from the moment they meet!
Afterwards there’s a trope of the genre, where the newly powered up protagonist goes and tests his powers against a known powerful opponent and trounces the floor with him. Everyone was so impressed that the Elven girl with big boobs gave him her number!
Next he goes off to do a simple pair of quests but someone who was mean who didn’t like him set him up so he might die, but he pulls an ass pull power out of his hat and the day is saved, so he goes back and totally pwns that guy!
His sidekick this whole time totally wants to jump his bones, but she’s so shy and timid she doesn’t want to say anything despite the two of them going through every step of it. It looks like character development, but the character doesn’t really change. I’m going to bring that up later.
Finally, they go to a new area to learn more and power level, and they save some young people with no real trouble.
After that, the sidekick turns out to be really pent up, and jumps his bones! There’s an extremely explicit scene describing the act of copulation between the two, and after a short epilogue the story abruptly ends.
There were a lot of parts of this book I enjoyed. The beginning was very strong, the description of the mechanics of the magic system was interesting, I really thought the spots where they were working to use their unique situation to make life easier was interesting, and the action scenes were well written enough that I could imagine what was going on.
I hit a certain point where I didn’t want to read anymore. Somewhere around the middle the paragraph after paragraph about how virtuous a guy the protagonist was just started to rub me the wrong way. I found the explicit scenes rather off-putting. The romance felt forced, and while the book told me they were growing, I didn’t feel it. At the end of the book after their copulation, the sidekick reverted to the same person she was in the first scene of the book – meek, shy, unsure – and at that point I just stopped being invested.
On the topic of the romance scenes and copulation scenes, I felt like it was largely focused on the mechanics, and I just didn't feel that was appealing. I'm not reading hundreds of pages for a description of actions I can see with 15 seconds on a search engine.
I feel like the books inflection points could have been done differently. Dramatic tension can be difficult to maintain when the main character is growing in power, but by the final battle of the book there was no question whether the protagonist was going to succeed, it’s just a matter of how much winning there would be.
It might be unfair, but I’m probably done with this series. It wasn’t what I had expected of it, but it also didn’t pleasantly surprise me by being more than it appeared.
Final Verdict: 2.5/5
Started to write this for Amazon, but realized I didn't really want to post it on amazon.
This review will spoil some plot points, but I’ll try to keep my statements vague.
At first glance, this story mimics a tried and true formula in Japanese light novels.
In the light novel formula, the protagonist starts off as someone who is of lower class but has obvious virtue, often because they work really hard despite appearing to be useless, or being nice to people in situations where they don't need to be nice, something like that. The down on his luck but virtuous individual by pure luck, or because they acted in a virtuous way in a situation that could have harmed them, or because some deus ex god figure recognizes their virtue, or because some deus ex god figure recognizes something about them that they don't know about themselves such as a dark secret. Because of this event, the previously powerless protagonist is granted a sliver of power, with the promise that with hard work more will be granted. Sometimes the protagonist is then introduced to a woman, and they through some contrivance need to spend the adventure together. Over the course of the story, the two grow closer until a romantic finale. In the meantime, the power is expanded upon and although the power is almost always clearly a world-breaker, its limitations are defined, and its mechanics are set up. In the meantime, short term and long term obstacles are established (usually in such stories the short term challenge is something like a boss enemy to be defeated, though sometimes that turns out to be several such challenges in one book depending on how it is structured), and the story is spent pursuing that challenge. The climax of a specific book in a longer arc of a story will be a challenge that seems to push our protagonist to the limit, and shows that despite the power-up the protagonist has received, there are still things out there that can challenge them, so they must continue to grow or they will be defeated next time. The epilogue of the story tends to focus on some of the boons gained by the hero in conquering the challenge and setting up the intrigue for the next book.
I picked up this book frankly expecting something similar to the above, likely written by a Japanese author. It was about half way through that I started to realize this wasn’t a translated work.
It started off small, using clichés that are common from English-speaking writers, such as repeatedly referring to a “wry grin”. Then I started to realize that I was in the middle of a multi-page discussion about consent, and in that moment I realize I wasn’t in Kyoto anymore.
The story starts off more or less like you’d expect given the formula, though the main character is a bit too much of a Marty Stu. He may be the worst summoner, but he’s the fittest, smartest, best student in the entire world, and if only he had more mana! And his weak summon just loved him and couldn’t figure out why he was such a great summoner who couldn’t summon anything, and then his weak summon sacrifices its life for him because he’s so amazing and he gets so mad that he powers up and his hair and eyes change color and he summons the best summon ever that nobody knows even exists and it’s a cute cat girl and she wants to generate new generations of cats the old fashioned way right from the moment they meet!
Afterwards there’s a trope of the genre, where the newly powered up protagonist goes and tests his powers against a known powerful opponent and trounces the floor with him. Everyone was so impressed that the Elven girl with big boobs gave him her number!
Next he goes off to do a simple pair of quests but someone who was mean who didn’t like him set him up so he might die, but he pulls an ass pull power out of his hat and the day is saved, so he goes back and totally pwns that guy!
His sidekick this whole time totally wants to jump his bones, but she’s so shy and timid she doesn’t want to say anything despite the two of them going through every step of it. It looks like character development, but the character doesn’t really change. I’m going to bring that up later.
Finally, they go to a new area to learn more and power level, and they save some young people with no real trouble.
After that, the sidekick turns out to be really pent up, and jumps his bones! There’s an extremely explicit scene describing the act of copulation between the two, and after a short epilogue the story abruptly ends.
There were a lot of parts of this book I enjoyed. The beginning was very strong, the description of the mechanics of the magic system was interesting, I really thought the spots where they were working to use their unique situation to make life easier was interesting, and the action scenes were well written enough that I could imagine what was going on.
I hit a certain point where I didn’t want to read anymore. Somewhere around the middle the paragraph after paragraph about how virtuous a guy the protagonist was just started to rub me the wrong way. I found the explicit scenes rather off-putting. The romance felt forced, and while the book told me they were growing, I didn’t feel it. At the end of the book after their copulation, the sidekick reverted to the same person she was in the first scene of the book – meek, shy, unsure – and at that point I just stopped being invested.
On the topic of the romance scenes and copulation scenes, I felt like it was largely focused on the mechanics, and I just didn't feel that was appealing. I'm not reading hundreds of pages for a description of actions I can see with 15 seconds on a search engine.
I feel like the books inflection points could have been done differently. Dramatic tension can be difficult to maintain when the main character is growing in power, but by the final battle of the book there was no question whether the protagonist was going to succeed, it’s just a matter of how much winning there would be.
It might be unfair, but I’m probably done with this series. It wasn’t what I had expected of it, but it also didn’t pleasantly surprise me by being more than it appeared.
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