Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles: Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles Volume 1

In general the book was actually pretty well written and should have rated higher, but unfortunately I found the MC to be weak and inconsistent. It's another one of those deals where no matter what the bad guys do, the hero refuses to compromise his ideals by killing them.... And so he ends up fighting the same guys/situations over and over. Not fun reading. I kept waiting for the MC to get pushed "too far" and blow up on his enemies... Sadly he remained a weak willed little worm all the way. Bad guys won!

The shared memory gimmick feels like it's used to craft a personality quickly for the sake of the story and the book goes to annoyingly great lengths to constantly bring up the MC's "I don't want to kill anyone ever" mentality. That being said, the story itself is quite fun and later books are definitely worth it.

The writing and flow of the story is fine, but the writing itself leaves much to be desired. The characters of the world are boring and cookie cutter. The protagonist receives the tiniest amount of character development throughout the whole book, and is barely fleshed out beyond the initial premise of a Japanese person's memories awakening in a slumdweller boy. The central conflict of the book is his experience being a commoner in a noble academy. Unfortunately, little happens once he reaches that point. One instance is when he first arrived, his status of being a commoner subjects him to ridicule by the antagonist, to which the main character responds with humbling, borderline obsequious comments with a hint of sarcasm under his tone. And then it's the exact same five years later, with the sole change being that the protagonist has students falling for him while he simultaneously maintains the image of a worthless commoner through the eyes of the nobility. Cookie cutter characters.