4.5 stars. Love this cozy LitRPG.
I just finished the latest book of Beware of Chicken, and was looking for something new to read. I remembered seeing recommendations for Heretical Fishing, and so I thought I’d give it a try.
This series looks like my jam.
It follows along the path of books where the MC “just wants to take it easy and be an X”, where X is usually a farmer. In this case, he wants to be a fisherman. Along the way, he finds a cool crab sidekick (and eventually others). He makes friends with the townsfolk, and manages to (unknowingly) drive away corruption and mistreatment.
There are a lot of things to like here:
- The MC is likeable
- It’s easy to read
- A touch of romance
- He’s building a strong group of friends in an intelligent way
- Likeable sidekicks with a crab, an otter, and others
- Secondary characters (good guys) are actively trying to keep information from the MC which is a new and interesting twist
Things that could be improved:
- The MC has no interest in the system
- The MC has no interest in the church/cult that people are creating to worship him
- The MC ignores the system alert messages and shows no curiosity about them
- The MC doesn’t do much to hide the fact that he’s an alien with special powers
- The MC talks in Aussie slang a lot, on purpose, and that’s really annoying and not funny
- There’s too much fishing
- The characters are also always eating fish, like a lot; and pastries
The author clearly loves fishing, and cooking fish. Almost every other chapter is about some fishing he is doing, and characters he meets all also learn to love fishing and eating fish. Good for them. But I don’t like fishing that much.
Maybe I should try fishing?
He also has an obsession with pastries. Every day they go into great detail about how they’re eating a croissant and little flakes are falling off on their shirt. That’s starting to get old unless it leads somewhere.
The other critique is all the Aussie slang. It’s not cute or funny. He seems to say it on purpose to confuse people. The people he is confusing are his friends/girlfriend. It’s an annoying habit. “Come by for a chin wag and we can grab some nosh.”
Please stop. Please. He’s clearly doing it on purpose to confuse people.
If I drop this series, it will be because of all the detailed descriptions of fishing and useless Aussie slang.
This series instantly goes into the pile of series I think are the best of the genre. But it’s at risk of falling off.
