The concept is interesting "what if we told a story from the perspective of a background character" is a novel idea. But the execution has the setting bending over backwards to make Goblins some major threat relative to everywhere the titular character exists instead of being the nuisance they are told to be. Mostly by having people just behave completely unrealistic in the face of the danger they actually present. I've only read the first novel but the starting setting is a frontier so far away from the actual front-line of fighting that they don't even get news of the demon lord's defeat for a couple days. If Goblins are the most prevalent attacking force to the point that the Guild officials are stated to actually want a dedicated goblin extermination force I ask the following questions:
- Why do goblin quests keep getting handed off to complete newbies who by the stories own admission; will fail 3/4 times on average
- Why don't goblin slaying quests get subsidized by the guild if they know low pay from the requester is the reason more capable adventurers don't take them
- Related to the previous point, how do these poor villages also manage to pay for troll exterminations or other higher ranking monsters if they are too poor to get decent adventurers for goblin slaying with their existing funds?
- Why is Goblin slayer unique in having a grudge against Goblins to the point that he's studied them?
- How come it's not more common knowledge of Goblin attack patterns if they are so frequent?
There are more I could consider but the end result of these questions is a story where it's frustrating to think about how the fictional world operates because it's missing any underlying logic to it. Not exactly good storytelling and it's just another example of an incredibly mediocre story getting pushed to the forefront (with two manga adaptations and an upcoming anime).
