Primer for the Apocalypse: Book 1 – Braided Sky

Very good implementation of widely-used tropes.

Earth is a weird planet. It doesn’t have magic. It doesn’t have non-human species such as Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs. It doesn’t have access to a system that turns mana and accomplishments into levels of self-improvement.

Earth was an experiment, with magic artificially suppressed. Now the experiment is ending, the magic is returning, and Earth will be reintegrated into the the normal magical galaxy. It’s going to be a rough transition for a world that thinks that high-tech means better physics and better software. To ease the transition, the galactics have started ‘selling’ an online game that is actually training for the new real world.

Emie has an advantage. Years after the true reintegration, things have gone wrong enough that she risked her life to send herself back in time. She was half successful: She sent her memories back. The game is a rough approximation of what will be the new reality, but she stands out enough that she becomes a real participant when the new reality arrives.

“Primer for the Apocalypse” inverts some Isekai tropes. Emie is not reborn into a new fantasy world, but into her old mundane world. She does find herself in a LitRPG-style world, but it is our world. She does battle monsters - but the battles are simple, and peripheral to the plot, and we don’t see much of them. Most of the page count goes to following Emie as she becomes an active agent in an Earth in Transition.

PftA is a web novel. It can be read online, or it can be begun online if you want to try it before reading the published novel. This review is linked to book one, which sets the stage and follows the protagonist in the time before the magic comes back to earth. Earth’s actual transition begins in book two, which has also been published.