I've agonized is with great pains that I give this a four, because this is a book I like probably more than any of the other books I've read on honeyfeed. This book that strikes a particular chord with me, and I must dock points, if only because this was submitted for an Isekai competition. But I refuse to go lower because I hope this story outlives the competition it was for. I'm going to get the shortcomings out of the way, so I can get back to praising what I love about this book.

The first obvious one is one that the author himself acknowledges, which is the slow pace of the story. It is encouraged for the isekai by chapter three, and the story does not do this. Personally, I do not think this is a problem with the story itself. In fact I would go so far to say to do this would hurt the story. The time we spend learning about the main character and his setting isn't just well done, but crucial to the tone.

Additionally, the action aspect of it: the story does not really get to see much in the way of action until much later in the book. Again, I will be frank, I actually think that the book shines when it's not in action scenes. While its action is well done, I think the softer moments of this story are really what make it stand out. The slow parts are never boring, and the characters linger but never overstay. It creates a cozy liminal atmosphere throughout.

Now, Let me talk about why I love this book. This is a book where every single pore and every single word drips with atmosphere and beats with a common heartbeat. There is a clear tone that is told throughout this story, and that tone is exhaustion and weariness. You can see it from the very beginning, before we meet anything else, we see Elias, not sleepwalking through life, but wearily trudging through it. A grey city and a firm running on stale coffee and fading ambitions.

It would have been so easy, I will add, for the author to have made the main character earn sympathy from a bitter home, and a failed marriage, like so many stories. It could have been like Linda from Replay, but he didn't do that. When we meet Elias's family, we meet a family that is running on love, and that's it.

When we reach the magical world, before we know who the characters are, when we're still getting used to our protagonist, before we fully know who his companion is. The first person we meet is a tired woman. The woman makes Elias's shoes, and we learn that this effort, while done out of care and concern and love, does drain her.

We meet Red and she is weary, as are the Bard and Artist. The world is held together by love as service not passion. Fawkes' youthful energy does not undermine this, but instead only heightens the contrast.

This weariness and this exhaustion, is even fed into the world-building. The world literally takes mental energy to work. Imagination is taxed, and the currency is literally rejuvenation potions: temporary respite from exhaustion, but even that cant stop the slow drain of the characters. I want to commend the author for his world-building here. This is probably one of the most unique world-building settings I've seen, and it doesn't try to be so. It's not going out of its way to showcase its uniqueness. It simply builds on a concept and expands it outwards. I'm in awe of the world-building of this story for taking concepts that I've seen before in Dark City, What Dreams May Come, or even Sandman, and threading it together, not only mechanically, but also thematically. I have learned so much from this book, just from its presentation of the world itself.

But going back to the atmosphere of the story, it's this weariness and exhaustion that nearly destroy the characters more than any monster, as threatening as those are. This is not—and this might be a detriment if one was looking for a simple power fantasy where the relatable teenage hero is performing great feats to the awe of women around him. This is not that story. This is a story about how weary and tired a soul becomes as it tries to care for others. This is a story about the cost of dreams, and this is a story about chasing the dreams of youth when the energy of youth has already run out.

I'm not sure if this will meet any competitions, but even though I think it deserves more. I mentioned it in one of my comments, that I genuinely think this story is probably one of the better high-concept sci-fi stories I've read in a long time. It reminds me of Philip Jose Farmer. It reminds me of Philip K. Dick, and of course, it reminds me of Matheson's What Dreams May Come. LN Publishers would ignore this work at their peril as this is the book that reinvents isekai and spawns an entire sub genre in the same way Slime Diaries did. I can't recommend this book enough, and I hope to see it professionally published in one form or another, so that I can get a hard copy.