Sorcerer’s Handbook Chapter 40 Discussion

TL;DR: An unfun reading experience with seemingly limited potential.

I originally read this novel when it was released as a trial read on Webnovel a couple years back, this review at chapter 40 is in honor of that. I will update it when I complete the novel.

Frankly, I'm extremely disappointed with this novel. I distinctly remember being on the edge of my seat praying for this to be chosen on Webnovel and I was ecstatic upon seeing it get picked up. Upon rereading the 40 chapters I have read before, almost all I could see were flaws.

This review will begin with my critiques followed by what I liked, if I can think of any by that point.

Firstly, I hate the characters. Every character that is introduced is unlikeable. This goes for both the main character and the side cast.

The main character is a weak-spined loser. He gets treated like a doormat by the manifestation of his system and he just sits there and takes it, lowering his cowardly head. He has absolutely zero defining positive traits. This may be bettered in the future, but it is so unbearable to read now.

The female lead is a spiteful promiscuous s*upid person. She is spiteful because she harms others for little to no reason with no benefit to herself. She is promiscuous because her dream for the future is to marry a rich man using her body and to live a lavish life. She is s*upid because every time she uses her head it's for jumping to the wrong conclusion.

I could write paragraphs like this about every single character in the novel. None of them are pleasant to read about.

Secondly, the character interactions. This isn't even about how I hate the characters so their interactions are naturally painful. The author straight up can't write believable character interactions. If someone told me this author hasn't spoken to another human in 5 years, I'd believe them without evidence.

An example of this is how Sonya, the female lead, feels about the Observer. She initially hates him passionately as he controls her body and reads her thoughts. Then she begins to be alright with his presence. Then she starts relying on him to get through her days.

What events might have transpired between these character shifts? Absolutely nothing. Not one meaningful interaction happened that may have shifted her perspective. It just happens. Just because.

There is more than just inexplicable shifts in personality though. The character interactions also are just difficult to read about. It's hard to describe it in text, but basically, they don't feel "human." It is as if an alien is pretending to be human. Really, it's just novice authorwork.

Thirdly, it is impossible to immerse yourself in this book. The realism is horrid. I won't delve into this and will merely give a single example.

The main character is in a fistfight with someone and wants to get them to lower their guard. So he says, "You have a nice face, I want to see more of it." The person, in sheer shock that they would be complemented during a fistfight, lowers their guard. The main character then punches them in the face and wins the fistfight.

I won't be commenting on how ridiculous this is. Next.

Fourthly, the actual power system is so lame. It is reminiscent of the Gu system, which I personally do not like.

It seems as if strength in this novel comes from taming what are essentially spirits. It requires reliance on external aids rather than relying solely on one's self. It isn't nice to read and progress doesn't feel like actual progress. The main character doesn't go into seclusion and have a breakthrough or whatever. He can just catch a better spirit. Lame.

That is also the main reason that I feel like this novel has very limited potential. Even if the author gets better at writing and the character flaws go away, this power system is a persistent tumor that won't vanish no matter how good of an author he is.

Fifthly, the translation is subpar at best. It isn't something as simple as a word being wrong, but entire sentences seeming to lose their meaning. It is somehow a worse translation than MTL, as in MTL I can at least decipher what it might have meant. It's relatively small compared to the other problems but still worth mentioning.

Sixthly, miscellaneous things that I wrote down that I didn't touch upon.

Author decided to include a section of the novel to advocate for allowing people to be racist and shaming this system which stopped racism.

There are super bad time skips with events. For example, the main character is on a journey approaching an island, then the chapter ends. The next chapter begins with him leaving the island with a quick recap on what he accomplished while there. We aren't actually ever shown the island or told explicitly what happened, just "here's the outcome."

Here's a really s*upid quote the author included, "But for some reason, he felt that bluffing was useless against Ashe, so he didn't bother pretending." This was the thought of an antagonist who was apparently hyper-intelligent. The author couldn't think of a valid reason for the antagonist to tell the truth to the main character and just went "But for some reason..." So s*upid.

Seventhly, literally while making this review I looked at the tags and saw it was harem. I'm actually upset because it wasn't tagged as harem when I added this to my reading list. I will not be updating this review anymore, I refuse to read such garbage.

I suppose that is the majority of my critiques, though I could probably double the list if I really thought about it. It's not worth it anymore.

The only good thing about this novel is that there are some good mystery elements so far. Hard to even understand the mystery because of the poor translation but it's there.

I would recommend this novel if you can bear with bad translation, harem, unlikeable characters, novice author, painful character interactions, an awful power system, and terrible realism. Basically, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.