Title: Re;Apotheosis: Aftermath
Author: Robert B. Marks
Publisher: Legacy Books Press Fiction
Language: English
Format: Physical
Pages: 294
Genre: Isekai, Reverse Isekai, Fantasy
Publish Date: February 27, 2023
The Story
Re:Apotheosis Aftermath is a series of epilogues and events that take place after Re:Apotheosis, which is the spiritual successor to Re:Creators by Robert B. Marks. There are four stories in total so I will give a brief synopsis of each one to avoid as many spoilers as possible.
The Odyssey of Daiki Yamato
The story encompasses about 75% of the book and is the most-detailed epilogue of the four. After the events of Re:Apotheosis, Daiki was left a sword that could create portals to other worlds. These worlds were the story worlds connected by the information streams that the creators created with their games, light novels, manga, anime, etc. The only problem with the sword is that there is a hefty cooldown so it can’t be used to open portals in rapid succession.
Daiki meets up with an alternate version of Captain Infinite (Cap) and convinces him to come on his journey as he tries to find his way back to his original story world. Along the way, he ends up in a strange world where he meets Aquila and her creator Kasumi. I would go into who they really are but I’ll leave that for you to discover on your own. They join Daiki and Cap but accidentally end up in a world that is just forming. They end up getting separated and now must find each other once again through some clever thinking.
First Contact
This story revisits Jenny Calhoun and what becomes of her after the war. Things get a bit complicated when Atria Silversword is called in because an incident occurred in the house across from Jenny and her creator Alice. Alice had been trying to get in contact with Atria as Jenny wanted to properly apologize to her but Atria would hear none of it. This made it a bit of a challenge for Alice to reach out and inform her that the incident in the house turned out to be a new Arrival who fell through the information stream and into their world. Atria had just gotten to Canada to visit Stella and Adam. Paying Stella and Adam’s way, Atria caved and the three of them headed to California to investigate the incident.
Going further would spoil the majority of the details but I will say that the ending was a bit shocking and sets the stage for some of what’s discussed later in the book!
Apotheosis
It’s extremely rare for multiple characters from the same story to fall into the real world… it’s virtually unheard of when the SAME character falls through twice! In this story, Atria Silversword has fallen through for a second time. What happens when a character falls out of their story and into the real world is that the story world compensates by creating a copy and rebalancing the story world as if they never left. Atria’s replacement after she fell has now fallen through and entered the world.
Apotheosis deals with her adjusting to the fact that she’s in a new world, starting a new life, and the fact that her previous version was there and had become something of a legend.
Coda
This is broken up into two small parts. The first part sees someone from Atria’s story fall through the real world and through their arrival, we learn about how everything unfolded over the years. The second part jumps back in time a bit where we get a nice little gathering and sendoff.
Final Thoughts
Re:Creators was the first time I had experienced a reverse isekai. Earlier this year, I was granted the opportunity to read the spiritual successor to it in Re:Apotheosis. I mentioned that I enjoyed it and that Robert B. Marks did the characters justice, even if he couldn’t use their original names due to copyright. I feel that Aftermath does a great job fabricating the “what ifs” after a story finishes. While Re:Apotheosis does that by providing a second war for our characters to fight in, Aftermath takes is a step forward and shows us exactly what the subtitle of this book… the aftermath… truly is.
Daiki’s story took up the majority of the volume and felt more like its own story. I will be honest, I was given an advanced digital of just that section which I provided direct feedback on before it made it to physical print form so I was already familiar with it. Even still, I re-read it as it was a nice refresher of things that I had previously read. The other stories were much shorter by comparison but even though they were, I don’t feel as if any of them overstayed their welcome.
As a light novel author myself, one thing that kind of annoys me is that people have an obsession with word counts and totals. They sometimes treat these things as a hard rule or a mandatory goal to meet in order for their story to be good or be taken seriously. My philosophy is… tell the story until the story is done being told and however many words it ends up being… that’s your word count. If it seems too short and you feel compelled to add more to it for the sake of length, realize that you’re just artificially inflating your story all for the sake of meeting some imaginary number you regard as false law.
I say that because despite how long or how short each story is here, they all served their purpose and every one of them felt just right. Whether it was a grand adventure like Daiki Yamato’s, short stories like First Contact and Apotheosis, or quick footnotes like Coda, everything just felt right when reading it and it gave us a nice look into the aftermath (no pun intended) of the story and brought to the table something a novel series rarely does… ties up all loose ends and gives us a definitive end to the story.
It was hard to go more in-depth in the synopsis section or even here in my final thoughts because this book does require you to read Re:Apotheosis and by virtue, to also watch Re:Creators. As I said in my previous review, it is not an official work but a spiritual successor. It doesn’t subtract from its quality as fans of Re:Creators are sure to find this series entertaining and if you have already read Re:Apotheosis, then Aftermath is going to serve as a satisfying conclusion to everything.
Pick up both and I’m sure you’ll enjoy them!
The Odyssey of Daiki Yamato will begin publishing on Tapas on December 2 so if you don’t want to wait for the full physical release, you can get a head start on it soon!
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This item was provided for review by Robert B. Marks
