#hayaken

Hero-King Inglis exhales his final breath, held to the bosom of a goddess. The old man, initially an orphan from a distant farming village, rose through the knighted ranks to become a benevolent king. Inglis was revered. Surely, then, when he is reborn, given the opportunity to study swordsmanship rather than statecraft, he would return to such heights, correct?

Inglis Eucus, of the Citadel of Ymir, does not recognize the land she once ruled: magic-wielding beasts roam the wilds, class hierarchy and corruption taints all politics, and for some reason, there's a massive island hovering ominously overhead. But that's okay. Inglis has retained her control over aether, a magical attribute, and pledges to devote herself to the blade ("The best training was against a foe actually trying to kill you," page 31). Being reborn as an attractive young woman may not be so great, but action and adventure is in Inglis's blood. Strange creatures? Betrayal at the hands of rebellious knights? Bring it on.

REBORN TO MASTER THE BLADE: FROM HERO-KING TO EXTRAORDINARY SQUIRE v1 moves at a sleep-inducing pace; the book doesn't explore anything worth paying attention to for the first 60 pages. The first one-third of the novel is, in short, The Story of Inglis the prodigy toddler, and thus nothing of consequence. But when the girl is a teenager, and willingly steps into fights against purported holy knights bearing the powers of sacred artifacts, the story shifts. When the author stops indulging the book's painfully retroactive worldbuilding, and focuses on individual character conflicts, the novel becomes interesting.

For example, Inglis, true to the novel's premise, is wildly overpowered. The character's abilities make much of her fighting broadly uninteresting. But when the young woman faces off against sentient weapons, called hieral menaces, then the trajectory of the narrative changes.

Readers will enjoy how the author sets up underdog secondary characters, who ostensibly fight for good causes, against a brash and overeager hero character. The clash of personalities and the clash of powers make for good drama. Regrettably, readers must to wait until they're nearly halfway through the book to find it.

However integral combat is to this novel, one discovers the fight scenes aren't written particularly well. Redundant narration is a big problem (e.g., Inglis uses the same moves over and over), scale is a recurring issue (e.g., spellcasting is insulated and melodramatic, and by extension, also garishly inconsistent), and poor narrative spacing often leaves readers utterly confused (e.g., of a swordfight: "And Rahl's slid uselessly down hers to the side," page 29). Similarly, the book's use of magic falls into the bucket of "interesting," but struggles to be truly unique. Every time Inglis uses her aether attribute, the author plows through an excruciatingly dry explanation that cobbles together a retroactive continuity to justify the young woman's ridiculous abilities.

The book's ham-fisted magic system further problematizes the isekai trope of the character being gloriously overpowered for no purpose other than narrative convenience.

A story's background conventions of culture and politics are essential, particularly for a book about the balance of a mind built for fighting versus one built for rulership. But keen readers know that bland or inert secondary characters represent a sly and subtle disparity between so-so fantasy novels and those of a higher caliber. Desperate readers might identify with Rafinha, Inglis's childhood friend, but the effort is worthless, for the girl is a prop and doesn't move or do anything unless the protagonist tells her to. Leone, who wields a longsword and slaughters without a second thought, is probably the book's best character. Too bad she doesn't appear until page 151.

These problems feed into others. Inadequate translation or editing work may have extrapolated the title's inherent shortcomings: awkward euphemisms and deficient figurative language ("Inglis's eyes narrowed in a grin," page 55); the wrong word use (e.g., "haul" instead of "hall"); and repeat efforts of devilishly bad syntax ("Inglis took Eris's and Rafinha's hands, and they were gone in a flash, running through the streets of Ymir to the outer walls," page 80).

The most perplexing note is the inclusion of unusual nicknames and diminutives. Through erroneous logic, readers are instructed to use "Chris" instead of "Inglis," and "Rina" instead of "Rafinha." Whether a consequence of an ineffective transliteration strategy or a mark of dubious and thus misinterpreted creativity, the use of nicknames for these (and other) characters is wildly, unnecessarily awkward.

REBORN TO MASTER THE BLADE v1 strikes at being clever but largely misses, settling for a kaleidoscope of horrible scene breaks, unnecessary and incomprehensible POV shifts, inexpert narrative spacing, copious examples of the male gaze, wasteful worldbuilding, unbalanced magecraft, and a worrying amount of forgettable characters.