This was one of the first books where it hit me that the LitRPG and anime Venn diagram now overlaps almost completely in places. The title reads like a slice-of-life anime, and the book is kind of like one.
A Small Town in Southern Illvaria
A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World #1
By Acaswell
Podium Publishing
September 2023
Alice Verianna goes to sleep as an ordinary teen from the Denver suburbs and wakes up in a forest in another world, Luliv, with no idea how she got there. So it’s another isekai, but there’s no one around to explain anything. She has to learn to survive by herself.
That’s probably the most interesting part of the book: watching her survive on her own and learn how this new world works before she ever reaches a town or meets anyone. She does get to a town eventually, but the survival section grabbed me right away.
Alice is an interesting character. She isn’t a warrior. She’s a budding scientist who wants to figure out how things work, the System most of all. She’s a bit of a Mary Sue: she’s so smart, and everything goes right for her. But that fits the anime genre this resembles. Books like this have basically become light novels with LitRPG elements.
There are three books out so far, with a fourth planned, and I’ll keep reading.
