Alice is a girl who loves science and lives on Earth. Then, suddenly, she was punted into another dimension. A dimension where magic and monsters roam the land, and, for some reason, a System keeps dinging at her and telling her that her stats and levels are increasing. As someone who loves exploring mysteries, Alice is determined to get to the bottom of this mystery. After all, everything has to have a ‘cause,’ including the System, right?
(This story is also posted on Royalroad. If you see this story anywhere besides Royalroad, Scribblehub, Amazon, or Patreon it has been stolen).
What to expect: This story is going to be a LitRPG set in a fantasy world. However, unlike many LitRPG’s, the system has both a definite beginning and definite limits to what it is able to accomplish – rather than a singularly omnipotent, omniscient being that is tied to the laws of the world, the way systems are usually presented in LitRPG’s, the system is close to both, but has definite limits and rules which it operates by.
Note: the rest of volume 1 has been taken down, due to the requirements for the KU program. You can buy the e-book for volume 1 of Budding Scientist using the link below.
https://www.amazon.com/Small-Town-Southern-Illvaria-Scientist-ebook/dp/B0CFW34H98
Or an audiobook link here:
https://www.audible.com/pd/A-Small-Town-in-Southern-Illvaria-An-Isekai-LitRPG-Audiobook/B0CFRK9ZK7?qid=1692201343&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=JJ1BXHB9NTSPP5FPNYXF&pageLoadId=AsHXZmcAq15OGzRW&creativeId=0d6f6720-f41c-457e-a42b-8c8dceb62f2c
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Aspiring Rationalist Isekai.
If you've read rationalist fiction before (and liked it) then you're in for a treat.
I especially like how the protagonist is genuinely intelligent; not Sherlock Holmes style where they have the ability to pluck facts from thin air but genuinely intelligent, the kind where you try your hardest to think your way through (and actually think, not just mentally ramble). Writing intelligent characters is hard, but this novel pulls it off, at the very least for the protagonist.
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Fascinating dive into studying a world of magic with a system. An intelligent and logical main character, who still makes mistakes.
And probably the first time where the "medieval" world wasn't actually that far behind in terms of knowledge to the modern world
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So made it to chapter 97 which means I like this one enough not to drop it. Lets start with the good. The #1 strength of this story is the world building. Like others have said, magic, the system and human society are closely linked. The author explores this quite well.
The bad: The story is really a slog at parts. The alone in the woods first arc is the worst example of this. Someone could read the first chapter and then skim the next ten and not miss much.
Fights: for some reason I really don't like how fights are done in this novel. They come across as confusing and have a inconsistent pacing. Some things are overexplained while at times after reading a bit I find myself wondering how things got here. Or I read something and think how is this happening? How stats, perks, and magic is a bit wishy washy. Can a person take a hit with a kinetic projectile from a character with X stats? How many direct hits can so and so take. There are no hit points or something like that so things are a bit weird. There are quite a bit of people that get one-shot but if someone can be one-shot or not is unclear as a reader. Can anyone be oneshot? Is this a world filled with glass cannons? Unclear
Also, character sheet bloat is a problem. Alice ends up with a huge character sheet as the story progresses. Many of the abilities barely ever get used. Why even award them if they are only going to be there for one page? The result tends to be bogging down the story with barely relevant stuff at times.
The biggest problem I would say is the old "Show, don't tell" saying. Alice spends way too much time in her own headspace. I get that she is a scientist and testing hypothesis, thinking of experiments is important. But the delivery is not very enjoyable. Suggestion: stop, (or at least cut back) with whole paragraphs of just Alice thinking to herself. If she would just voice her ideas to her friends it would be better IMO. Reading dialogue is easier than mental musing and can get the same message across.
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This story maybe little too slow for people who like fast pace story but after around 20 chaps the story become more and more fun it just feel like we are experimenting and discovering the system with the protaganist.
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This is the first litrpg I've read where I felt the litrpg aspect was integral to the story, rather than being some way of making writing progression easier. I've long wondered about whether I dislike litrpg as a genre-tag, but this story proved that notion false. There are a lot of good litrpgs out there that are good, without really owing much of their quality to their litrpg aspects, instead to their character dynamics. This story, however, has the concept as a core. Quite frankly, if you like litrpg progression, this story will probably be up your alley. The thing you might find off-putting is the fairly consistent perspective switches. Some of them have intrigue, but there are a lot where I wasn't particularly invested in the random new characters being introduced by the switch.
Overall, for people who enjoy stories about mana, this is a gem.
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I feel like this story is a sort of critique of the iseaki genre, or at least certain aspects of iseaki. Iseaki has a tendency to imply that the protagonist's old world is superior to the fantasy one. Sure the protagonist's old life tends to be bland or terrible, but when they're sent to the alternate world their knowledge from their old world tends to set them above the residents of the fantasy one. They can decimate large armies and swarms of monsters with their recreated guns or abuse their knowledge of physics with magic. They recreate conveniences of our modern world in a very technologically struggling world and get praised for it.
This story takes this idea of bringing over knowledge of our world to dominate on its head. It says that thinking your high-school physics puts you above everyone else in this alternate world is the peak of arrogance. From what we've seen so far this new world works completely differently. Its alien and weird to us. The people have a completely different perspective. To really sell how out of her depth the protagonist is, the story starts off as a wilderness survival story like hatchet. It's a really unique take on the genre.
This kind of story basically lives and dies on its world building and so far I think its been doing a great job. The world almost entirely revolves around the system and mana. The monsters have been pretty unique, although we've only seen a few and the magic is very interesting and unique. All these things have obscured rules that pique the readers' interest and make one want to continue reading to learn more.
Overall I'd highly recommend at least giving this story a try, however I have a few warnings. The story spends a lot of its time in the protagonist's head. Personally I really like this (in this story at least) because the whole point of the story is to try and understand the world, but others may find it boring or feel not a lot is happening each chapter. Also the protagonist's actions can sometimes feel frustrating this is a bit of a spoiler but an example is...
there is a point when leveling up where you litterally become immortal. At one point the protagonist meets an immortal and when talking to them doesn't even think to try and ask them if they might be willing to participate in an experiment or to. Like they're doing experiments on what happens when residents enter a place with no mana and you don't even consider what would happen if a being made completely of mana went into the room?
Otherwise very good story
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EPIC
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Rating - Overall a great readThe pacing of Alice is nice and comfortable. Something I do like about it. She is completely logical and uses fair reasoning when making her decisions. Which is part of the charm of the novel. Also the story feels very concrete and sturdy. All of the characters feel logical and self aware of Alice as well.
I really do like how Alice questions the system itself and gets rewarded for it. I rarely see that in other Litrpgs.
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This work is delightful. The prose is solid, the characters are compelling, the pacing kept me up late at night, and the focus of the story helped me get a more complete picture of what I like in a litRPG. Specifically, I really appreciate it when an author goes through the trouble to really think about the implications of something like a System (the focus this work places on the preconditions necessary for something like that to arise is a bonus). Like, when a level 50 fisherman can catch enough fish to feed a village, what implications does that have for the economic conditions of the world at large? Especially where the story is at as I write this review, this work has a heavy focus on that kind of question, and I truly love to see it.
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Love/hate this story all throughout 158 chapters.
As long as reader has an ability and will to mostly ignore (turn off) logic thinking, then read through an obscene amount of plot armor, describing why time and time again our protagonist (read Mary Sue / Savant researcher) reached new level of OP, doing the bare minimum, without reader spontaneously combusting, - this novel turns into a truly enjoyable gem to read, it deserves much more love than it has accumulated so far.
Now, about the bad.
Plot armor galore throughout the whole novel: (perks where MC choices dont matter, she does not grow as a person, surviving (and learning) through fallouts after making bad desicions/choices-at-level-ups, 'cause author will fix every single poorly taken perk as the story goes into a completely unrecognizable OP ones (explained simply as more support from System than it gives to everyone else, I presume) with no logic involved, as to how or why, in most if not all cases; her unique class exists sorely for enabling even more plot armor whenever events progress towards a harder problem, or a more difficult opponent shows up than MC can possibly defeat on her own, rather than using 'Earth' knowledge to weasel her way around difficulties.) It goes beyond that, but perks and this one unique class are a major player in this case.
MC, for some baffling reason, starts her adventure with a balooned out of proportion INT stat as a reward for doing nothing else than going to school for half a decade, taking some basic lessons in robotics and... there's no 'and'. That's it. Apparently she is a hidden genius that remains hidden (genius part of her) from readers even after 150 chapters.
By now, I have completely given up expecting MC taking Magic learning perk and boosting her Dreamwalker ability in which there's limitless mana to experiment and just as much more limitless possibilities for her to grow as magic researcher in a (relatively) safe environment with no self-harm at the very least. Just her time-magic perk alone would produce 50% time speed up evolving 8hrs of sleep into pseudo 12 hrs of scienc-y boosted study time. Why then MC continues to be an irredeemable moron is beyond me. But wait, there's more: she has access to ALL the enchanting material in the world via her sugar daddy's unfathomable pockets, yet did she ask him for any herself? No. She did not. Because reasons.
Early in the story and throught it MC skips every single perk related to food except the very first one. Yet she is an extreme workaholic, who doesnt even sleep nowadays. Why not take a few perks and convert them into mana regen, food consumption (no more food poisoning AND frees up 2 hrs /day) to photosintesis, etc., etc., etc., so she could gain some freetime to unwind. Instead MC wastes Dreamwalking scienc-y boosted hrs reading novels. Strange decision. Even for 15 yr old.
No char development at all. Although not much time has passed in the story until now for a good amount of char dev. It is simply a much more visible problem when MC doesnt do very well with logic in her daily live, especially when it matters for her mid-term and long-term plans (they are nonexistant, if u r wondering) : not a single time MC had any intention to ask friendly/allied immortals for some help in the developing of a planned/meta perk-build for her group of classes, not even a little min-maxing or stat/class-grows perk were involved at any point of time of her level-ups, just her taking whatever best fits to answer a current problem and repeat; Everything else is being magically fixed through a unique class, perks closely related to this very unique class and achievements' rewards most of which are, u guessed it, related to her unique class).
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