The Eminence in Shadow

The very first light novel series I legally purchased for my Kindle.

I found out about this series through the anime adaptation, and I liked it, motivating me to read the rest of the volumes that were not adapted, but some time went by since I was already reading another series, which I'll talk about in another review.

Finally, I decided to read the entire series from volume 1 to 6 (as of March 2026).

What's the book about?

It's a comedy/action Isekai; you have this high school guy (Cid) who lives a double life in what is similar to our real world. He goes by pretending to be a normal high school student but has been training all his life to be some sort of "master of shadows," some somber figure who manipulates things behind everyone's back.

During the introduction he looks like some Batman clone that does what he considers justice during the night. You get a general picture of the purpose of our character in this introduction before he gets hit by the legendary truck that every main character of an Isekai faces at one point.

After that, he gets reincarnated into a new medieval/fantasy world; there's magic, mythical creatures, and your common stuff. As soon as he gets conscious (as an infant), he already aims for the goal of becoming this "master of shadows" in this new world that offers a lot of possibilities due to the magic stuff.

The rest of the characters are nice and get enough attention in the series; we get to meet them really quickly since in the first volume after being reincarnated some characters will join him, and he will get to attend a new high school in the new world with more characters to be introduced. They all get a fair amount of backstory and their own adventures, to say the least; it's not always about the main character, and I appreciate that. The main character is funny, but if the story just repeats the same jokes, you can get tired of it.

This light novel series is comedy/action; my description might be vague and serious, but the content always has sparks of creative writing that make the reading enjoyable. It's absurd to read the situations that happened throughout the story; it feels like a parody of every Isekai at some points, but I do get to enjoy that a lot. The action part is also nice, but comedy is what I enjoy the most due to the exaggeration and absurdity of every character.

Should I read it?

If you are someone who enjoys anime or light novels, that's a nice point to go ahead with.

If you enjoy genres like Isekai, Comedy, and Action, that's also a nice point.

And if you like other series like Konosuba, Overlord, SAO, and Solo Leveling, there's a fair chance you'll like this as well.

To put it in other words, I recommend this series as a parody of Isekais; it's funny, it exaggerates a lot of plots and writing that I feel it mocks itself at many points, it always comes with new things and repeats some jokes from time to time, and it always tries its best to create an epic scenario for our main character, and if not, he will do his best to create it.

Go watch the first episodes of the anime if you want to quickly decide whether to invest time in this series or not. As for me, I really enjoy it, and I'm looking forward to the next volumes.