Review: Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint

Overview

Review

Strengths

• Intense and amazing slow-burn rivals-to-friends interaction between the main character (Kim Dokja) and the novel's original protagonist (Yoo Jonghyuk).
• Fun found family dynamics between a ragtag group of misfits
• Good character development for all the characters

Flaws

• I felt like the epilogue got a little *too* complex, though I still enjoyed the ending.

I started reading this book thinking it would be just another power fantasy of a reader transmigrated into a book using his knowledge to become over-powered. However, this book surprised me in the best way. I love that this novel goes very heavy into the meta concept of the reader, the writer, and the story - drawing influences from history and mythology - and really digs into the cognitive dissonance of being transported into a fictional world, and what separates a character vs a person.

The absolute highlight of this book is the slow-burn rivals-to-friends interaction between the main character (Kim Dokja) and the novel's original protagonist (Yoo Jonghyuk). They start off grudgingly using each other for pragmatic reasons, while thinking very little of the other person. Over the course of the events, they eventually come to trust and admire each other (still grudgingly of course) until they would willingly die for each other. ("Only I can kill him!" is literally my favorite trope in this type of dynamic, and Yoo Jonghyuk actually declares this at one point!)

The supporting characters are a lot of fun as well, including a lot of them who fall into very complicated gray areas. (I initially had no good feelings at all about Han Sooyoung, but by the end of the book, she became a strong favorite of mine!) And the group Kim Dokja gathers behind him becomes a very dysfunctional but amusing found family.

The plot becomes increasingly more complicated as things go on with higher stakes and more terrifying large-scale fights, maybe even a little too much so, but I personally enjoyed how everything tied together through the epilogues. It's very mind-bending but satisfying.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who's looking for a really well-plotted isekai/portal fantasy with humor, really interesting and evolving relationship dynamics between the characters, and a heavy dose of meta about what it means to be a reader and a writer.