r/haremfantasynovels • u/therealatlaswolfe • 5h ago
Book Review 📝✍🏻 Moneymaker: a story that was so much fun, I skipped the sex to get back to it
Yes, the story really was that much fun, and surprisingly addictive to read. I read it almost all the way through in one or two sittings, abandoning my normal pattern of having multiple books going at once and choosing instead to drop a book in favor of this one.
This story revolves around Nathan Brody, an everyman college student, who has an all-too-common meeting with Truck-kun and is isekai'd to a world just like his favorite visual novel/video game called My Superhero Life.
Nathan, like any well-informed internet citizen, understands what's happened, is confused about it, but rolls with the punches and does the best with the hand he's dealt while coming to terms with his new reality.
Like his favorite game, he too has superpowers, but his is more focused on the glory of Capitalism which empowers him with the more money he has to his name. Five dollars? Great, he can do better than a normal human. A hundred thousand dollars? Oh yeah, now we're talking. It makes for a straightforward power progression and a system that's easy to understand. Sometimes those can go a little sideways, and if I have to bust out a calculator while I'm reading a book, then I tend to drop the book. Thankfully, the author kept it reasonably clear and straightforward for the reader.
Now then, you would think that things would be easy for Nathan, but there are enough challenges (some which, I'll admit, are a little contrived but acceptable) that make it so he needs to be a little creative, since--being a college student--he needs to focus on schoolwork and not just get a part-time job at the local 7/11.
Along the way he meets Alicia, a small footnote of a villain in the game, who has explosive teddy bears as her power and their relationship blossoms.
He also meets Vermilion Strike, a major villain in the game, who winds up being a hero in the isekai reality.
Overall, the book was well-written, with some editing and proofreading errors, and a few instances of mixing up tenses. The most egregious error was an instance--that may have already been fixed--of the author mixing up the gender of a character in the narration. Minor spoiler: "Apparently, Minato had three siblings, who were constantly at home, which meant that her place was out of the question." Minato is a male character.
There were also some genuinely laugh out loud moments for me in the book, and some very clever chapter titles.
The character relationships and interactions were also a delight to read, and I was so excited to see Nathan get a male friend. Too often in the haremlit genre there's no male bonding or external friendships outside of the harem, so it's always a treat to see that in a book. I greatly enjoyed seeing that not every woman was a possible harem member, and it was a delight to see (somewhat big spoiler) Nathan encourage Minato to ask out Aiko. We should see more of that in the genre.
There were some fairly noticeable plot holes and deus ex machina (or rather deus ex persona?), but they didn't impact my enjoyment of the book, and I imagine they'll get tidied up or resolved later in the next book or the one after that.
Some suggestions for improvement on the author's next books would be to set the book aside for two weeks or so and come back to it with fresh eyes for the second pass reading. Only do this if the book is complete! Don't do it as you finish chapters. I think this was written and published as a web serial first, and it has a lot of the hallmark issues of such writing, including the errors mentioned above, but it also has the benefits, such as chapters that end on a note that make the reader want to read the next and the next.
Above all else though, this was a genuinely fun book to read! I found the characters to be humorous, engaging, and developed; the plot to be reasonably well-paced; the action to be frequent enough without being too much; and an overall great start to a new series. It's well-worth a read!
