- #1
At the moment my rating for this novel would be somewhere between a 4 and a 5. It's hard to explain but I find the world in this story to be quite unique and I like it quite a lot.It is a world of mages and non-mages, but a mage isn't what you think it is. A mage in this world is worshipped as the equivalent of gods as has been customary for hundreds of years. It is not a coincidence that the mages are viewed as gods as this ideology has been built up year after year through propaganda and brainwashing. In some ways the world's culture is like a giant cult, which explains the behavior of the non-mages that may seem pretty 'wtf' to someone looking in from the outside like a reader does.This cult way of life worked well for many generations as it was supported by the mages' inherit powers. If a non-mage farmer needed a better harvest, rather than praying to a god of harvest, they wait for a mage to come. If a house needed to be built, a mage will grant their wish. But now that the number of mages are declining the mages cannot grant all of the wishes of the non-mages. A harvest now will wilt. A house will not be built. The non-mages become starving and homeless. While this problem has been recognized by everyone in the world, not much has been done to combat it as of when the MC reincarnates. Mainly, the threat of a declining mage population had been seen as a problem of the future rather than one of the present. It's similar to how we see Global Warming here on Earth. A threat in the future, so no action is taken until it gets bad enough. And even then we are hesitant, since the measures against it go against the structure of how we have lived our lives thus far. People start to change their thinking around the time when the MC reincarnates. But even so, it is done out of necessity to live rather than anything else. The non-mages' faith and belief in mages keep them from going against the status quo, and they revert back into such a frame of mind whenever possible.Although the world setup is what some other reviewers least like it's what I like the most. XD For other things, hmm, I think the character interactions are average/slightly-above-average for a novel here? There's a decent focus on the character relations in this novel, and while they aren't bad per-se, could be improved somewhat and not the highlight of this story for me thus far.