Book Report (mini) - Random rant about Aether's Revival

Originally Published: Oct. 31, 2023, 1:14 a.m. Last updated: Oct. 31, 2023, 1:14 a.m.

Tags: books

I'm 20 chapters into book 2 here, such a sucker for this kind of shit. I wanted to gush a little about some random stuff. This will be much heavier on SPOILERS than I usually try to make this but it's too much for me to subject Rebecca to and I want to release the internal tension I have.

Back in book 1, we get to magic school and to learn what kind of magic you have, you grab onto this special legendary magical jewel-encrusted naginata. It had a name, but I didn't memorize it. Whatever kind of jewel glows tells you the kind of magic you have. One of the little conflicts is that Greg's jewel is one that nobody knows what it's supposed to be for, so most people spend the book not knowing what kind of magic he's supposed to be able to do, which also means that he can't be actually taught how to use it. Later on, they have a vaguely similar setup where you walk around touching a bunch of enchanted weapons, and the one that feels the most right is the one that you're best suited for. Interestingly, the one that Greg is really good with is... the naginata. His instructors comment something like, he's so naturally good with the naginata, it's like he's a reborn soul using the weapon he used in the past. Huh. Anyway, it was a subtle little thing, until the very end of book 1 where Greg is told he's "The Aether Reborn", implied, at least to me, to be the literal incarnation of their magic system. And the mysterious magical weapon that tells people what kind of magic they have is... a naginata. Not so subtle anymore, but still cute and clever.

Ok, so book 2. Harem route is building up. Rolling my eyes a bit. End of book 1, Greg is now engaged with Yuki and they're super smitten with each other. Greg's Aether speaks to him, takes the form of a woman hidden in the shadows, and heavily implies she was lovers with his past life. Then she speaks to him and Yuki and is pretty much like "we'll share him." Now in book 2, Greg and Yuki have joined a new clan, and they're brought in a girl they met at the big tournament, and she's explicitly feeling jealous seeing them together, but Greg has future vision and has seen a future for each of them on separate occasions where they're each happy with the decision to join this clan, so I'm pretty sure we're just going the harem route. What's annoying to me is that Greg has no male peers he's close with and every new character close to their age that isn't a terrible person that's introduced is another girl. What's more is that several of these girls also don't have clans. HMMMM. He needs like at least a Sasuke-esque rival to have friendly clashes against, but everyone's a movie villain.

Anyway I think that's all for now.