A work I initially skipped over for reasons I can’t recall, Stuart Grosse‘s Lich Returnee series turned out to be somewhat similar to Arifureta After. Which is to say it’s a story about what happens to an overpowered isekai antihero when they manage to return to Earth only to find that the world is not as mundane as previously thought.
This story has little in the way of dedicated comedic aspects however and no romance whatsoever, instead being focused primarily on mechanic/worldbuilding discussion with a subfocus on action. Though there are some issues with repetition, and being novellas each book is roughly half the size of your average LN, the pacing is handled amazingly well with smooth transitions from event to event. That the author doesn’t rely upon cliffhangers is also a mark in their favor.
On a whim I decided to take a look at the web novel source material for a couple of the recent series I had been reading, and discovered to my shock that David J. Wuto‘s Metaworld Chronicles happened to have roughly seven more books of content available to read. So read them I did.
On the one hand, the ‘university years’ unfortunately happen to take up the vast majority of that additional content with her graduation only finally taking place rather recently. On the other, very little time is actually spent in or around said universities. Most of the action takes place either on field trips to various exotic locales (South America, the Underdark, the Asian steppes, Antarctica, Aukland), where things have to die, or is focused on the protagonist’s various business and kingdom-building endeavors. The base setting also undergoes some changes, first to the UK and then to mid-Asia.
Anyway; it’s good. Real good for the most part. Just have to be forewarned that every now and again you’ll get a chapter that’s far too overdramatic by half.
