Reflection of Another World, Vol. 1

Actual rating: 2.5★

Rounded up because the art is pretty.

I honestly don't know how to feel about this book.

The premise itself sounds really interesting. It's isekai where beauty standards are seemingly reversed from the world we know, so our main character Yura, who is deemed as plain and uninteresting in the real world, becomes an unparalleled beauty in the land of Tolkinia. In contrast, a handsome knight named Sei is bullied and ridiculed for being the “ugliest” man in the nation. Life sucks for Yura anyway, with her getting accused of theft she didn't commit and her best friend being fed up with her inability to stand up for herself. A trip to another world that worships her for her beauty seems fun and different, right?

Right.

If the book stays with that concept, that is.

It doesn't.

My biggest problem with this book is that the blurb is pretty much half of the book. It moves at a pace so slow it's rather maddening, with prettily written sentences that barely contribute anything to the plot. By the time I reached the last chapter, I realized that the story hasn't made much progress because it has so much padding. It felt like reading pages and pages of... nothing. Yura spends so much time panicking, running around, and crying, only to end up at the exact same spot anyway. Maybe it's because of the flat writing or the overall sombre tone of the book, but whenever it tries to insert funny, lighthearted moments, it just falls flat.

Speaking of Yura, I have a problem with her too. Her personality is so inconsistent. Yura is supposed to be shy and timid, but as soon as she lands in Tolkinia, she does things that aren't exactly shy and timid. She talks back to people. She barges into places she shouldn't be. She charges into things without thinking. She even laughs at the emperor, and considering they're not close or anything, behaves inappropriately towards him. It would've been fine if she gradually opens up to the people around her, but there's nothing gradual about this. To make it even worse, she plays her “coward” card randomly. It's either she just remembered that she's supposed to be one, or it's necessary for plot reasons. There's no such thing as a smooth transition in this book, everything comes and goes abruptly, leaving me unsure about what just happened.

That being said, I do find the plot interesting, thin as it may be at this point. For that reason alone, I will give the next volume a try even if I can't shake off the feeling that the writing isn't really for me.