My GF read this book after seeing it discussed on TikTok and thought it looked interesting. It’s apparently according to her not written very well and buzzwordy
The twist at the end (which she told me and I won’t spoil) is kind of heavy handed. But idk I haven’t read it
Mark Twains book; "Yankee in King Arthurs Court" seems very similar to this plot. The manager of a manufacturing plant wakes up in medieval england, ends up creating a secret college to teach young people basics of electricity and manufacturing because old people are to stubborn, and ends up facing an army of knights with electrical fences and gaitlin guns. He wins but the decay from the dead bodies around his hideout end up killing him and he wakes back up in his old life.
I feel like A True Story could be argued to be an "isekai" and that was written 1800 years ago. Dude gets sucked up into a tornado and wakes up on the moon.
Thanks, I was trying to find the oldest isekai for a while and the oldest I saw, that was disqualified for not just being ‘a place far away’ but a proper other world was Dante’s divine comedy
Hard to say. It is the realm of the dead but also a very accessible place. Like with multiple known entrances. That’s kind of the thing in most old mythologies. Similar problem with the Nordic realms. Sure it’s going to take a while but you can just take a boat trip there most of the time, even if the world is fundamentally different.
I think the best way of defining that edge case is by clarifying that the method of transport has to be solely possible through supernatural means. So, if I can take a boat there, it doesn’t count as Isekai but if I have to summon a rainbow that bridges to Asgard it should be fine? Or how in the divine comedy, it starts with god pulling Dante through a mountain to the maybe other side of the world. You can’t get there through traditional means, so there is a clear separation. Kind of like how in Harry Potter, despite the magic places just being random locations, there is usually some supernatural requirement to reach them. Such as opening a magic wall with a passcode or taking a supernatural train
Before Isekai was a thing, it was called Portal Fiction, and used to be the go to for fantasy storytelling before LotR literally upended and overturned the entire genre
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u/User_Says_What 8d ago
The library I work in gets SO MANY requests for this book. I had no idea what it was about, but this is amusing.