Incomplete rating. The 4 is a lie.
I've rated this 4/5 for the story.
For the book as a whole its closer to 2.5/5
Far too many spelling, grammar, syntax, mistakes. I would honestly leave a point by point break down of everything wrong, however, I've been swayed by the fact I actually love the story.
I enjoyed the characters, they are just anime enough to push all my nerd buttons, without being too far over the top as to be cliché and annoying. Each has their own twist.
Main character is weird, goofy, and very likeable in a broad sense. He also had some darker, sharper edges that were interesting to see from the self styled "comedy hero". It was extremely weird that we didn't have a clear physical description of him until more than halfway through the book though. That was a choice, didn't read as a good one.
The powers were great. Whether it was deliberate or by accident it gave me Gravity Rush, which is one of my favourite games. And the story was contrived but in the best way possible. It was entertaining, and at each possible moment where it could have fallen into something cringe it swerved into something more interesting and remained light hearted and different.
I particularly enjoy the fact that a big thing in this story is that its very meta. It subtlety but also very openly mocks the concept of plot armour. Then has a major plot twist where that rabbit hole just keeps getting deeper as characters start understanding they have a stat that allows them to mess with their own plot armour to a degree. That was extremely new and I love the idea.
It wasn't all good fun though. As I said above, spelling, grammar, syntax, and a few occasions of just making up a new word in place of the correct word, or maybe a different sentence structure ("discluded" instead of excluded springs to mind among others).
There were several places in this book where reading a sentence or paragraph would generate a headache based on the number of different perspectives (3rd person/1st person) and tenses being used at once (past, present, future). Notable standouts were on a few occasions, when a character was talking about something that had happened (past tense) but was using both present and future tense language to describe it. It was a mess, and those in particular completely threw me out of enjoying narrative, and into "omg I want to edit this book so it stops hurting my brain with these mistakes".
I'm always harsh on this issue from any author because if your book is not ready, you shouldn't be selling it to people. This book is wonderful, but it needs a thorough copy edit.
There is my dilemma. Do I give a good book a bad review for being unready even though I kinda loved it? Or do I go full hypocrisy considering my review history and say "this is fine"😬
Hypocrisy it is, but at least I'm disclosing it. I really loved this story.
But seriously please edit and re-edit your book before selling. Everything about this should be good but those edits...