He Who Fights with Monsters

This book starts off annoying, gets better, and then crashes and burns.

The annoying: Jason is a very chatty person and starts off his adventure alone and ends up talking to himself. A lot. He's also completely nude. There's a lot of middle school humor and bodily fluids - blood, vomit, puss - in the first chunk of the book. I almost quit reading.

Better: Still obnoxiously chatty but with lots of characters to bounce off of. So many characters I had trouble keeping track of them all. The audiobook reader helps differentiate some. The world mechanics are interesting but leveling is very slow.

Crash & Burn: One of the prominent female characters gets fridged. No one else of note dies, just the female character so the guys can build character and bro-mourn. I'd been ready to pick up the second book until this moment. Instead it's another series for the isekain't pile.

Started out wonderfully! And then wouldn't end.

The first third of this book is extremely interesting and very well told, with surprises around every turn. Then the author starts repeating the same battles in different settings. It's gets really repetitive really fast, not great for a book of this length. A lot of people seem to really love this book though, so what do I know?

I really enjoyed this more than I thought I would, finished in Just shy of 2 weeks. I usually only listen to audiobooks during my commute or while going for walks but I just kept on listening to this when I would get home. It was a good fun listen, if there was a strike against it it was performance in that the reader voices for characters didnt always stand out so it was hard to tell who was talking at times.