I've finished reading my copy of Oh My Goddess! First End. It has an intriguing premise - something goes terribly wrong and the only way to make it right again is to turn back time, but that isn't as easy to do as they think... I won't say anything more about the plot, since I expect many other folks here likely want to read the novel as well.
In many ways, it reads like a fanfic written by an Urd fangirl - there are quite a few references to events in the manga clumped together in the first few chapters, as if to show that the writer really does know the setting. But that's a minor annoyance. It's a good fanfic; the author's favourite character doesn't get all the good scenes. More than her share of them, yes, but not all of them. And Skuld doesn't get the mistreatment she often does in stories written by Urd fans.
(Of course, the novel was written by an Urd fangirl; Yumi Tohma is Urd's only Japanese voice actress, and it's obvious that she loves her character.)
Two characters I would have liked to have seen didn't appear, but there was no real way to include one of them and the absence of the other is necessary to the plot, so I shouldn't complain.
And the ending doesn't spell everything out - Tohma-san assumes you have a brain. I like that...
I'd recommend the book to any OMG fan.
-Rob Kelk
"Actually, my goal is to write neat stories. The money just makes it possible for me to write them faster and then buy neat toys."
Ryk E. Spoor, 7 November 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
In many ways, it reads like a fanfic written by an Urd fangirl - there are quite a few references to events in the manga clumped together in the first few chapters, as if to show that the writer really does know the setting. But that's a minor annoyance. It's a good fanfic; the author's favourite character doesn't get all the good scenes. More than her share of them, yes, but not all of them. And Skuld doesn't get the mistreatment she often does in stories written by Urd fans.
(Of course, the novel was written by an Urd fangirl; Yumi Tohma is Urd's only Japanese voice actress, and it's obvious that she loves her character.)
Two characters I would have liked to have seen didn't appear, but there was no real way to include one of them and the absence of the other is necessary to the plot, so I shouldn't complain.
And the ending doesn't spell everything out - Tohma-san assumes you have a brain. I like that...
I'd recommend the book to any OMG fan.
-Rob Kelk
"Actually, my goal is to write neat stories. The money just makes it possible for me to write them faster and then buy neat toys."
Ryk E. Spoor, 7 November 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012