Great story with some nice character designs and vast, interesting world but it has some flaws. MC has so versatile knowledge and superior memory that it's sometimes too much (especially given his normal background, no preparation time and zero "superpowers", it's impossible for any mechanical engineer or any other engineer to accomplish something even remotely similar to what Roland did in such a short time and without painfully reinventing tons of little annoying things and prototyping). There are some technical errors in "science" part of the novel but if you aren't educated in the field it's hard to notice and most inventions and manufacturing processes are believable. Time to construct (even with witches powers) and encountering almost no problems designing everything on the other hand is a little bs. That said it's one of those rare novels where you can often learn something new that it's applicable and used in normal world.
Another problem is MC depends on witches powers too much even when there is a realistic option to do it conventional way and because of that some witches are somehow doing exponentially more work than their magic power reserves should normally allow (Soraya ;) ). Some witches powers are a little too convenient to situation and what I think is the biggest flaw of RTW is smooth sailing syndrome. Encountered problems are too easily overcome and some witches powers (especially healing/regenerating powers) destroy any feeling of danger. There was one moment when I really thought Roland will lose his arm and it was such a great opportunity to make him grow, nerf his skills and depend more on other people, I was seriously so excited to potential interesting changes but we got convenient reset and downplay of whole dangerous encounter. Author don't like dramaturgy and it seems he want to keep novel ****** and light to read.
There is very little emotional growth for our MC and some characters seems a little blank (Anna) but others make up for it for the most part. Romance in novel is subtle, almost non-existent and slow paced. There is a love ******** but it seems it will be resolved one way or another, no harem in sight.
Overall it's a great read. I recommend it to anyone who likes unorthodox, interesting world, science, kingdom building as these are RTW strongest points.
Translation here is mediocore. Some choices were made to suit english readers and I think it wasn't a good idea. Well, we will see. It's readable at least.
