Restart Again

I went into *Restart Again* expecting another cookie-cutter fantasy adventure, so Ladner’s twisty, self-aware take on the genre caught me completely off guard. The premise is deceptively simple—what if every time you died in a fantasy world, you just woke up back in your original life?—but the execution is anything but. Ladner avoids the trap of overwrought introspection by grounding the story in sharp, often hilarious dialogue and a protagonist who’s more anti-magical realist than chosen one. That’s a refreshing contrast to the usual ‘chosen one’ tropes. Alex Knox’s narration deserves special praise here; his ability to switch between deadpan sarcasm and genuine tension kept me hooked. My only critique is that the worldbuilding occasionally skims over details that could’ve added depth—we get hints of a larger system at play, but it’s left frustratingly vague. Still, the pacing never lags, and by the final act, the existential weight of the premise hits hard. It’s rare for a fantasy novel to make you question the tropes it’s built on, but *Restart Again* does exactly that.