Bog Standard Isekai: Scarred

De: Miles English

Narrado por: Johnathan McClain

Sometimes dying isn’t even the worst part of your day.

Mark’s new life begins in the worst possible place—a burned-out village haunted by undead. Each morning these ravenous creatures disappear, only to return at night, driven by a relentless hunger. He'll need to stay low and think quick, because trapped and alone in the body of a child, he can’t level up in this new world. At least not yet.

Soon Mark will learn that even among the living, safety isn’t guaranteed. When the small town that he ends up in turns out to be at the center of a conspiracy that threatens the world, he'll need to uncover the truth before it's too late. Mark will need to find allies, gain levels, and face countless horrors in order to survive his second shot at life and prove that he's more than just a bog-standard hero...

With over 4 million views on Royal Road, this is no ordinary LitRPG. Bog Standard Isekai is a slow-burn, incremental, magical progression fantasy containing slice-of-life elements punctuated by moments of intense violence.

©2024 Shadow Alley Press (P)2024 Shadow Alley Press

Bog Standard Writing

One of the better fantasy Isekai stories I’ve read this year.

I’m not usually a fan of the “adult in a child’s body” trope (in most anime and stories, it usually ends up creepy), but this one handled it pretty well. Having an adults memories was actually a bit of a hindrance bc he saw all the kids his age as children, so he couldn’t quite fit in.

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The world was interesting, and I liked the system overall. The MC gets a bit overpowered for the climax, but I liked the choice to change it something a bit more evenly paced. As amazing as illusions were used in this book, I’m actually quite interested in seeing what glass can do.

Looking forward to book 2

Solid book, not too fancy or cool but solid.

In the beginning the narrators conversation between characters is somewhat unnatural and it effects the deliveries of some of the jokes. As the book goes on he gets better and it's good by the end. Solid book and story, nothing too fancy though.

Glad I picked this up

Characters are good. Storyline is good. Narrator is always good. Give it a listen. Three more words

Unexpected

I took a chance and hit a bullseye. it is a good story we'll told and world decently built.

The first and only "reborn as a child" isekai that does it RIGHT!

Title says it all. This series sets the Gold Standard for what every isekai should hope to achieve.

Yes, he does some childish things, but they're never poorly thought-out. His actions have rationale, consequences, and no decision felt like a shoe-horned plot device to move the story along.
Yes, he takes some unnecessary long-shot risks, especially at the beginning, and some of his plans pay off, but not in the overwhelming success you'd imagine of a Deus Ex Machina protagonist. He is met with failure nearly as often as success. Even amongst his peers (other children) he tries very hard but is NOT the best at everything.
Yes, several of the important supporting characters are children, but they're well-developed and not annoying.
Yes, there are characters that you are annoyed by, or dislike, but you dislike them for all the right reasons, and even those characters' actions are totally reasonable considering their thoughts/positions/personalities.

I can't recall a single time I thought to myself, "Why is he doing/not doing this very stupid/obvious thing?" and to me that demonstrates excellent writing.

The only mild criticism that I would level at this series so far is that it has a lot of elements of slice-of-life instead of adventure, and I wish there was a bit more of the 'go off and do adventurous things' (a la Defiance of the Fall, Dungeon Crawler Carl, etc), but nonetheless I was enthralled the entire time.

I was MOST impressed by his ability to show how an "evil class" shapes your perception or actions but doesn't actually make you evil. In fact, throughout the series he even makes a damn good case for the idea that no class is evil, and thus it's not the class that spurs these antagonists to evil, it's simply their priorities, goals, desires, and traumas that culminate in a sum greater than the parts.

Narration was excellent. Each of the main and supporting characters has an excellent and easy distinguishable voice, and the protagonist's voice does an excellent job of toeing the line between 'kid' and 'hero'. Even his petulant little girl voice is well done, if a little heavy on the whiny side (but honestly that's just the way the character was written).

I bought books 2 and 3 after finishing 1, have since finished book 2, and I am still rating each book and the series overall 5/5, gold star, etc.

Do yourself a favor and invest your credits or dollars in THIS series instead of other isekai, especially if you're a fan of the premise.