“In other words, there are at least thirty thousand people here-“
Shiroe intentionally avoided saying gamers.
“-but no government and no laws.”
- Title: Log Horizon, The Beginning of Another World
- Author: Mamare Touno
- Genre: YA Fiction
- Pages: 768 pages
- Publication date: April 21, 2015
- Publisher: Yen On
Years ago, I watched Log Horizon and fell in love with it. When I noticed that an English adaptation novel came along called Log Horizon, The Beginning of Another World, I was intrigued.
The light novel was first, so it’s correct to say that the show follows along with it well. Since it has been years since I saw the show, reading the book was like reviewing an old story I liked. The story has a loose connection with Sword Art Online (SAO) since gamers get stuck in a game. The game becomes their real life. But SAO brought a love story while Log Horizon brought in complicated concepts.
The story follows Shiroe, who is an Enchanter in this MMORPG game. He runs into some old friends as he tries to discover the new world around him. He thinks of different strategies as he runs into more dangers. They even run into simple concepts that they can’t understand like why does all the food taste the same?
My main critique was the dialogue. It felt all right, but there was almost no dialogue tags. The dialogue got split into many tiny paragraphs. Who said the dialogue was right underneath in the next paragraph. An example of this is on the right. If there was a conversation between two characters and a third character butted in, I wouldn’t know about that third character until the paragraph after. I had to stop and rethink who said what dialogue.
The novel also took a considerable amount of time explaining the world. For someone who is not a gamer or doesn’t know the story already, this novel would be easy to understand. But since I knew the story well, there were many sections I could skip. It was hard to connect with a story that I could skip around with.
Overall, the story is still great. If you’re looking for a light read that has an interesting plot, this novel is good for you.
Score: 7.5/10
Average rating on Goodreads: 4.15/5
Robin LeeAnn 