The Boy in the City of the Dead

The Faraway Paladin, Volume 1

By: Kanata Yanagino, James Rushton - translator

Narrated by: Liam Price

In a city of the dead, long since ruined and far from human civilization, lives a single human child. His name is Will, and he's being raised by three undead: the hearty skeletal warrior, Blood; the graceful mummified priestess, Mary; and the crotchety spectral sorcerer, Gus. The three pour love into the boy, and teach him all they know. But one day, Will starts to wonder: "Who am I?"

Will must unravel the mysteries of this faraway dead man's land, and unearth the secret pasts of the undead. He must learn the love and mercy of the good gods, and the bigotry and madness of the bad. And when he knows it all, the boy will take his first step on the path to becoming a Paladin.

"I promised you. It's gonna take a while, but I'll tell you everything. This is the story of the deaths of many heroes. It's the story of how we died, and it's the reason you grew up here."

©2016 Kanata Yanagino; English translation copyright 2017 by J-Novel Club LLC; Original Japanese edition published in 2016 by OVERLAP, Inc.; Cover illustration by Kususaga Rin (P)2023 Tantor

Refreshingly Different

I loved the anime adaptation of this story and it is clear that it held close to the source material. There really isn't any extra in here to learn if you've seen the anime, but it is still a nice listen. I think what I liked best about it was the unique angle of having a child raised by three undead, yet they still form a close family unit. It's very touching.

Thankfully you can ignore that it's an isekai

Another great setting mared by the need to be yet another run of the mill isekai. It's like the writer had a great story and setting, then retroactively ruined the story by making the main character be from the real world. It's the most generic and unoriginal thing a story can do. Thankfully it rarely comes up, only occasionally popping in with modern day reffrances to destroy the emersion. Also I'm so thankful for the lack of HP bars and skill trees and other video game junk. Imagine how much more interesting Will's character could have been if he really hadn't seen living people before. I also really like the setting and the epic scale of things and the pantheon of gods. The narrator though was annoying. He pauses after every sentence. Honestly unsure if if was an AI doing the reading. No emotion. You learn to ignore it after a while, but it really ruined the experience for me. I'd say just watch the anime instead because of that.