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Originally Posted by apr
Finished Mahouka-koukou no Rettousei vol 1 by Satou Tsutomu. It takes place in the year 2095, where magic has been discovered to be real, and augmented by technology, it's turned into a kind of advanced engineering field. To fully take advantage of this setting, our protagonist is, of course, a high school student with a fawning little sister and pretty girls surrounding him.
This title is surprisingly popular, having started out as a free web novel on an amateur site, where it racked up 30 million views. A publishing house noticed it and convinced the author to publish it in book form, and now it's just a matter of time until it gets animated. Not that any of this saves it from being shit.
The author has the most hardcore infodump fetish I've ever seen, making the book horrendously tedious to read. If a character is taking the train to school, he'll waste two entire pages describing how trains have evolved, including superfluous information on how the pricing differs if you occupy more seats. To make matters worse, the magic system is filled with fictitious jargon, and working through what it all means in page-long explanations on the different branches of magic or the maintenance of magical devices is worse than studying for a biology test.
I can appreciate his passion for world building, but randomly stuffing encyclopaedic paragraphs of completely made-up information into his plot is a terrible way of doing it. It would make more sense if it at least had some kind of connection to what's going on, but nope, someone uses the train, so we've got to explain the history of the train! Someone uses a mobile device, so we must describe every minute detail of these devices! Why is there no teacher in the classroom? Here's a few pages on how the school system is developing in this imaginary future! You get the picture.
As I reached the final page, it dawned on me that this volume is actually just the first half of a longer novel, so it practically ends in mid-chapter. In spite of that, I sincerely doubt I'll ever bother to get the next part, since it'd probably put me into a coma. Maybe the inevitable anime will cut down on the tedious bullshit.
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I actually agree with you regarding the overwhelming details. And the worst thing is that it's not just limited to world-building...... Though it doesn't stop me from loving it.
This is really its greatest weakness for some, but it can also be its greatest strength when used appropriately, especially for fights. At least, his knowledge in computers and physics is a lot more solid than Kawahara's knowledge about brain science. As a DM for Dungeons & Dragons for 1.5 decades, I can really appreciate the amount of details he put into the world building, rather putting the readers through great suspensions of disbelief in a futuristic setting with overly trite conveniences. Of course, I'm merely speaking for myself. Though sometimes, it can be indeed a drag when a particular portion adds little value to the plot.
All in all, it's all a matter of reader taste and preference, and bear in mind that you are just speaking for yourself when you are labeling it as shit.
Actually, from all your past criticisms on many of the popular light novels, I wonder why you are still hanging around reading light novels? The majority of light novels these days either have bad or lazy writing, bad presentation style, cliche developments, or bad this bad that. Most of us light novel readers are either amateur readers or people who enjoy an aspect of the story without concern for its flaws. You should just move on to read mainstream literature. Of course, it's just my personal thought and you have the choice to continue reading and
flaming bashing criticizing as much as you like.
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Originally Posted by florza
*3 121.43 *12.91 106.52 **2.00 六花の勇者
Probably wouldn't even make top 60 if not for one faction severely favouring it.
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I read the reviews and summary in Konorano guide. Seems like an interesting fantasy that I want to pick up next year.
Note that collaborators are give higher point values, and as I recall there are only about 50 collaborators among the 1500+ survey participants.