The premise is great, the execution much less so. A Japanese guy named Kazuya Souma is summoned to another world to be a hero. However, he's not really a demon-slaying kind of guy, and the summoning didn't specifically ask for someone who could slay the demon lord, so he decides that his heroism will involve improving the country's economy. He uses his new magical ability to get paperwork done at a faster rate, and he puts out a call for people with abilities that might be able to help the country.

I just finished the section in which he evaluated the five most gifted individuals, and I'm not all that impressed. Apparently the absolute most important person in the bunch is a guy named Poncho Panacotta, who went broke pursuing his desire to eat anything and everything that could possibly be eaten. In a country that is currently in the midst of a food shortage. The author just spent several pages emphasizing how wonderful it was that Souma recognized Poncho's importance, but readers still don't know why he'll turn out to be so vital. All I can think is that maybe he'll have knowledge of a particular source of food that most folks in the country don't know about. But I feel like this would work a lot better if Poncho were a talented chef rather than a self-admitted glutton.

Souma's a hard worker, sure, but he doesn't strike me as particularly amazing. Instead, it's more like this country was so badly managed that even Souma's basic knowledge about how things might be improved (selling all the things in the royal vault that have purely monetary value, gradually switching from growing cotton to growing more food crops, improving the health of the country's forests with periodic thinning, etc.) is seen as revolutionary.

It took me two tries to add this to my Currently Reading shelf. Booklikes kept timing out. If this keeps up, I may have to go on a Booklikes break. I just copied over the information I need in order to keep track of BLopoly even if I can't reach my own Booklikes blog.

Anyway, this is my pick for my latest BLopoly spot. The title has all the letters necessary to spell "Rome." We'll see how it goes. It's another J-Novel Club title, so I'm not expecting much. The main character seems a bit boring, and the story just sort of plops readers into whatever new world he's found himself in, without much warning or time to adjust. The main character was barely fazed by being transported to a new world and was looking over account books and world history within an hour of arriving.

Geez, Booklikes is working slowly for me tonight. Anyway, I finished this, so that's another $3 for me.

I'd recommend this to fans of the series because of the progression in the Vinni and Avellana storyline, but the romance between Signet and Cratag was weak. The pieces were there, but they didn't fit quite right. Also, this felt like it could have been shorter.

As long as I don't think too hard about how fast the romance has progressed, I like it. Lonely heroine who thinks she's doomed to have everyone she loves leave her, hero who wants a place where he's needed and welcomed. But yeah, it really doesn't make sense that they've fallen all over each other so fast, even considering that they'd met a few times prior to this book. It only took maybe a day for the kissing and heated looks to start.

The non-romance storyline is nice because it ties in with an overarching series plotline that I'd thought Owens might save for the end of the series, although a quick Goodreads check indicates that it's going to take another 8 books for Vinni and Avellana to be old enough to star in their own book. I'm not sure how I feel about a romance novel starring characters that were first introduced in the series as children.

Actual frequent on-page dialogue! It's a breath of fresh air after The Saga of Tanya the Evil.

That said, I've just been smacked in the face by one of the problems with this series, its unintentional cheese factor. Noble families have sentient homes, with the AI housed in a place known as the HouseHeart (edit: I just realized that some of this info might be wrong, since the HouseHeart has a female voice but the public area has a male voice, huh). They're protected rooms, so there are special ways to open them. The Marigold family HouseHeart can be accessed by...tap dancing. This is taken utterly seriously. There are traditional shoes, stored in a special cubby.