I absolutely loved this story. It was so great I finished it in a single day.

I've been craving stories where the main character gets transported, either by time travel, portal, or aliens, to a less advance society. And uses their knowledge of the modern age to put themselves in a better position, and improve their new world.

And this one hit all the marks. Here you have an alternative earth, where ages ago someone transported a bunch of humans and other species from earth to an alien planet (not that they know) and basically has an earthlike world that is different. They have muskets, and surgery, but not much else that is modern.

The main character being a chemist means he has a lot of knowledge about a lot of things, and he struggles with finding how to implement in this world where he has to go back to the basics and find everything in nature first.

The first book is very much slice of life, and I loved that. I loved the slow story of being on a foreign planet with foreign humans. Not knowing the language or the customs. And slowly learning.

There were things I disliked, the main characters first reaction to seeing battle was an desire to flee. It took him several pages to even mention "can't leave my friends". Which made me severely dislike him, but I suppose it's.. maybe a more realistic reaction in the face of death? Bravery is, after all, being scared shitless and still standing there.

The book takes time to underline how different this planet is to earth, it takes time to explain how the moons are different, and periods are different, and the day-and-month cycle was different. But then some things was the same. Like the use of minutes and miles. Other reviewers complain about this, however I really didn't notice until looking at other reviews.