I really enjoy this book. Everything in it felt really dark and gloomy.
After seeing the anime I had great expectations on the series since I know that no season 2 is on the making but I wanted to know what happened to all those people...
In this book it depicts probably the first 6/7 episodes. The first 150 pages - the group forms (There are some differences here from the anime) the group train, first goblin kill, the death of a friend (Manato). The second part of the book deal with the loss of Manato and how everyone coop with it and the coming of a new priest Merry.
Haruhiro is the main character and almost everything we see or know its true his eyes.
Ranta is the same in the anime and book (snarky / brash / arrogant and troublemaker), Moguso (is a bit different - in the anime they all band together but in the book Moguso join another group that stole all his money), Shihoru (is almost the same but in the anime there is no indication that she is in love with Manato - but in the book Haruhiro hints at it) but Yume it's all different. In the anime she is very brave and energetic (same as book) but in the book she talks like... "Yume thinks that is wrong." - "Maybe Yume don't want to learn that" - "Yume don't have tiny tits" and so on... in the anime she is quite normal lol Strange... Then we got Merry/Mary which is a new healer totally different of Manato. But very equal in the anime and light novel.
Basicaly the story follows a band of people that awake to be in another world (isekai) but have no recollection of their previous world/life. They know same words of things that don't have there (Cell Phone, australia, tsundere, game and other words). what's odd is that they never try to figure that out and basically accept with resignation their lives.
They are to in a group of trainees where everyone will follow a path (fighter, rogue, ranger, magician, priest and Dark Knight among others) and band together to stop some evil guy that might come out. Most of the book it deals with this struggle of first battles - what I really enjoy is that in the beginning even a single goblin is difficult and not easy peasy like per example "In Another World with My Smartphone". It's really grim(gar) with the loss Manato but there are moments of comedy (not like Konosuba bear in mind) - well basically everything Ranta does).
Really enjoy the novel and going to buy the next ones...