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Haunting and compelling!! I've seen the previews of future additions on tumblr and am looking forward to having the whole thing available - the concept and prompts really capture the imagination in terrifying ways.

So. A lot of SFF I've read in the past tends to get bogged down in trying to juggle presenting its worldbuilding versus presenting the plot and characters, and will often wind up leaning more heavily towards one at the expense of the other. Wonders of Mundus, on the other hand, does a really fantastic job of balancing the two by having its conflicts arise organically out of the consequences of its worldbuilding, and introducing the characters to them as they become relevant.

Someone else described the series as being driven by the question "where does the food come from?" and I have to agree - much thought has been put into the underpinnings of trade and commerce that govern this world, and the demands of the supply chain inform the trouble that arises for our protagonists. This serves to get the reader invested in the world in a way that breathes life into things by way of its familiarity, without all the dryness of a lesser fantasy novel's lore dumps.

(And of course, the loving descriptions of delicious-sounding food is a bonus, too.)

It's hard to know where to start with this book, so I'll lead in with a little bit of my own context: I don't read a lot of the isekai genre, nor do I really play MMOs except in passing! You might think this would hinder my enjoyment of a story that on the surface is all about those things, but you'd absolutely be wrong.

While I can tell even with my passing familiarity with the tropes of the trade that this story enthusiastically deals in playing with the expectations seasoned readers of portal fantasy might have about where it's going and what it's doing, that's far from the only draw it has. This is a story about videogames, yeah, but it's a story about people first, and Talia and her co-authors have crafted some fantastic folks for us to get to know. The dialog and character dynamics flow beautifully, with characters flipping between clever banter when they're on top of things to wonderfully, realistically awkward nerdy stumbling when they're not, and they always feel consistent with themselves all the same. You really get the sense of camaraderie between the main cast from the word go - not only that they like each other, but WHY they like each other, and that's no mean feat to establish so quickly.

I could easily keep going about this for ages, but to keep things at least sort of brief: S++ would highly recommend to longtime fans of the genre and newcomers alike, especially if they're in search of fresh, funny, and heartfelt takes on trans journeys of self discovery or queer romance.

A beautiful, haunting, and relatable experience. It made me cry like three times.