World Sphere

De: Always RollsAone, Erick Thiemke

Narrado por: Nikola Hamilton

What would you do if left unattended during your reincarnation? What would you choose from an endless list of abilities for your next life? Time is short to select what skills you need in your next life. The hero of this story chooses a life of wealth and prosperity, but in a world of infinite magical possibilities, plans are quickly disrupted.

Storme finds himself reincarnated into a Dyson Sphere stabilized with powerful aetheric magic. Fantastical creatures, terrible dangers, and treacherous dungeons are abundant. It doesn't take long before he succumbs to the adventurer's life.

©2022, 2023, 2024 Erick Thiemke (P)2025 Erick Thiemke

Amazing Book

Great overall.

The only thing is that the main character knows he is not going to be the best swordsman or warrior. He knows he needs to defend himself. Why would he have not spent time developing a combat spell all ready? If I nearly died, I would have already developed a combat spell. That’s the only gripe I have about the book. One of the those intentionally hold the MC back moments.

Darn good, devoured this one with haste.

Similar style and tropes to A Soldier's Life, but that's a good thing. Fresh characters and situations, enjoyed the character interactions. Infrequent stat readings, which was greatly appreciated. Like this author, followed, looking forward to more of his consistently enjoyable high caliber stories. Nikola Hamilton did a fantastic job with narration, very convincing gender voices. I didn't even realize he took over for A Soldier's Life in book 3, that's how smooth the transition was.

Another Banger!

The Book started out a bit rocky for me but then I started to get into it. And now I am salivating for the next one! Hurry Up!!!

Another great story!

I absolutely love this story as well as the authors other published story, A Soldiers Life.

Great start!!

Can’t wait for the next book. This was a great start to the series. Only thing we need is to give our boy some offensive spells so he is not getting his ass kicked all the time.

It's interesting

The voice acting is Great.The overall story is not that bad. Unfortunately, the Ending. seems a bit rushed. There are quite a few story lines that don't go anywhere or just disappear. The worst one in my opinion is the mc was given some good books to just Try and convince someone to do something but then never Brings it up.

Cant wait for the next one!

I really enjoyed the book, the Narrator was great. waiting to see were the story goes from here.

Pretty good

It’s not “a soldier‘s life“ but it’s still a pretty decent book feels more like a cozy slice of life kind of deal than a action packed adventure type of book

An engaging story.

First, I will qualify that I started this series after reading the author’s more well known series: “A Soldier’s Life”. And there’s a lot of commonality between the series but some noticeable differences. Overall, I enjoyed the book greatly, and read it in about a day.

The setting is essentially a man from earth, a chef by profession, dies in a landslide while hiking on holiday. He awakes to long hallway with doors and a disinterested clerk at the desk letting him know he qualifies for reincarnation thanks to mostly positive karma. Essentially, he’s able to build out his new life, life on a world with magic, and not just any world, a Dyson sphere of truly massive proportions.

Like the Soldier’s Life, this setup narrative seems rushed and clunky, but it does its purpose. And we get to the gist of this entry novel, which is a brief overview of his life from birth to awakening his magic. And from there about a year’s worth of training.

The magic system is different than Soldier’s Life, and seems to be an entirely different universe, the stories are not connected. But in the end ways I like the best about Soldier’s Life, the magic system is the same. Meaning that there are no levels, instead magic is based on potential and reaching that potential. This allows for a magic system where there isn’t nearly as much top-heavy, disproportion between peak magic users and everyone else like we see in a lot of other progression series. In those series, these setups mean the only way to advance the plot is to raise the stakes over and over. Over time, that can feel repetitive, and start to break the immersion because it’s only too convenient the challenges those characters face always equals them or slightly exceeds them in level. So the reason I think I prefer these no-levels systems the best, is that it allows for the authors to then write more relatable stories at believable levels of stakes. This more resembles real life where a life’s journey takes people in a lot of parallel directions, it’s not a constant grind up a ladder.

So far there is a difference to a degree with Soldier’s Life. I think both of these series flirt with a version of grimdark, meaning a protagonist with more of a good guy narrative than those series, but in every other way from the realism to the bad choices and moral ambiguities, it is grimdark. The differences so far is World Sphere is much less violent. But tonally, it is still set in a world with a lot of different players where corruption and cynicism comes into play.

My complaints are really fairly petty. They probably won’t bother most readers. My biggest personal pet peeve in these genres is using English phrases, idioms, etc, in the context of a world speaking another language. This is something I even catch Hollywood doing in historical series where the context is a different language but they speak English for the audience. Some series, like say Rome, do a great job of never once using a single English phrase or idiom, because that would be out of context and anachronistic. But this series, like the first couple of Soldier’s Life books, constantly has these phrases. For some, they make sense because our MCs of both series have memories from their time as English speakers. So it is plausible they would introduce some phrases. But one time another character, not being the MC, makes a joke about the MC’s chili (he’s a chef and introduces a lot of earth dishes). The joke is tied to the fact that chilly and chili are homophones… that makes zero sense. That character doesn’t speak English, those words almost certainly wouldn’t be homophones even if we give that the MC coined the phrase for the dish as “chili”. A mild annoyance for most, but really immersion breaking for me. To the author’s credit, I think he’s recognized this issue in his later novels and I think it’s not something we’ll see in future novels in this series at all.

MC also says his father always said “Go big or go home.” Which father? His earth father, which he supposedly can’t really remember, so that must mean his sphere father which again makes no sense. It would make sense if MC introduced that phrase to him and he picked it up, but that’s not the context it’s made in this book.

Also there’s a bit of a hole in both series with the MCs’ relationships with their families. In Soldier’s Life, he barely ever mentions them except wondering how they’re doing. No stories, no real grief or lamentation over losing them. No references to them in his inner monologue like when say something reminds MC of them. To me, that doesn’t feel very realistic. A minor gripe again. In this series, it’s more in your face, because not only is there barely any relationship or dialogue with the MC’s sphere parents, but it’s like the MCs of both series don’t really care. Again, doesn’t seem very relatable. Even if you have a bad relationship with a parent or both parents, they are still a big part of how you operate and so would at least think about.

My next complaint is the general lack of action or conflict in this novel. I understand it’s a set up novel, and it does that very well with really interesting world and magic building, but still combat and action are a pillar of this genre. I don’t think every series has to have it though, just a personal preference that I prefer it in progression series. Of course, it’s not a deal killer for me as I liked this book a lot. And to the author’s credit, I think the action will ramp up significantly in later entries.

Another issue I have is the MC’s age. He’s 12 in this book. It’s hardly referenced and I didn’t even realize it until I started Book 2 (rough draft on patreon). It seems very odd he AND HIS BEST FRIEND are so capable at 12. It makes sense for him, he got to build his character, but they’re even talking about having sex in the next book. Just weird. Wouldn’t have hurt anything for the MC to have been 15 going on 16 as I thought it was when I was reading.

Overall a promising start to what I think will become one of my favorite series.

Amazing world building 

If you liked his other series, you will definitely like this one and for me this one is more enjoyable because of the world  building .