Glass Kanin: An Isekai LitRPG Adventure

Glass Kanin, Book 1

By: Kia Leep

Narrated by: Daniel Henning

As a rising actor, Kanin's body is his career. His identity. His life. All that is taken from him when he dies and is reborn as a bottle of ink.

Now living as the heart of a magical glass servant, Kanin's new purpose is to perform a senile wizard's yard work—a role this world's magic system seems intent on enforcing. All that might have been manageable if a murderous shadow monster wasn't hunting his very soul.

But he's not in it alone. Teaming up with an elf whose soul has likewise been trapped in a toy octopus, they recruit help from a devilishly handsome rogue and set off on a journey to break the spell that's trapped them in this state.

A wizard owns his body. The magic system has determined his fate. A shadow monster wants to control his mind. But as long as Kanin's soul remains his own, he'll fight to win back his autonomy—or die trying.

Again.

Glass Kanin's blend of whimsy, humor, and horror will appeal to Ghibli fans looking for queer characters on a quest for their agency while exploring what it means to be human. With over half a million views on Royal Road, this LitRPG and monster-evolution is now available in print, ebook, and audiobook across Amazon, KU, and Audible!

©2025 Pulsar Publishing (P)2025 Podium Audio

A fun, imaginative romp!

I wasn’t sure about the genre, but I’m glad I took a chance! This was a fun, imaginative story with engaging characters and an interesting plot. The narrator did a great job too - they avoided the mortal sin of audiobook narrators (making everyone sound the same!), making the characters distinctive and animated.

A good isekai is rare

It's always great to find an isekai that doesn't devolve into over powered protags, it is sadly exceedingly rare, this is one that does the feeling of fragility right. It never feels like he's able to solve all the worlds problem or defeat any odds, this book is worth the credit and time and has gotten me through a rather boring shift of work.

A decent start to a series.

The book was quite good, and the narration was great. Unique voices and and smooth tone that is pleasant on the ears. The story is interesting and has some pretty unique challenges for the MCs. The early pacing is a bit slow because of how significantly disadvantaged the MC initially was. True, when you are suddenly a small, limbless piece of glassware, getting off a table would be a herculean task. But the success is just... being on the floor... Though fairly interesting, some of those initial challenges maybe could have been done more in a montage style. I also would have been happy for there to be solutions to a few of the MC's ongoing challenges. Yes, he has no mouth. Magical world might offer a telepathy spell or a translation spell others could use to understand written messages? Nope. Also, he learns to manipulate glass to act as limbs, but no, he can't attach them to himself. So, he is constantly at risk of dropping himself. I kept wondering why he didn't wrap some glass around himself to attach to his limbs. Felt like there could be solutions to some of these things if he had thought to find them. But overall, the story was interesting and fun to listen to. I am excited for the next one.

Not sure

I'm honestly not entirely sure what to think about this book. On one hand I love the premise on the other the mc being an actor and the narrator supporting this is too much for me.

There where parts were the only thing I could think of was get on with it and the narrator acting like he's performing on stage was both a bit much and distracting from the story. Kind of hard to focus on the store when I'm imagining the narrator on his knees and crying into the microphone. Which I mean good for the narrator, they should try theater or voice acting, I'm sure they would be great at it.

I admit I could go on but I will say this. The story is good not my favorite but good, if you can get past the narrator or enjoy his antics you will like this book and enjoy it.

Loved it

I didn't want to turn it off, the story is well written with fun characters and the perfect amount of detail for a litrgp (just enough to keep it interesting without becoming tedious).