Reviewed as of chapter 6:
I'm currently at the latest release and so far the book is good. Its about a swordsman (Who I presume was famous, although its a little vauge on how powerful he was in his last life) who died while fighting a monster that could destroy a country and he got reincarnated as an elf. Right now he/she is just training and the only real issue so far is the fact that she is already 11 years old... The priestess of their party being in love with his past self so I'm assuming thats a hint to the two of them getting together later in the series (although we don't have a yuri tag) but assuming he didn't get reincarnated before his previous self died then its been at least 11 years since his death which would make the priestess quite old...

Anyways, so far the series has a good start, depending on future chapters though the series could go to sh*t though. A lot of stories are written by authors who have a good idea for the start of the series (for example this one where "Strong swordsman dies, reincarnates as elf, becomes student of really knowledgable elf") but the author doesn't know what to do after this so the story just kinda crashes.

Review as of chapter 45:
So I just finished catching up on chapters again, still like the series so I'm not going to add anything else.

Normally, I would complain with "the MC should have been a woman to begin with" when a gender bender character is just gimmicky and poorly written.

However, I'll put more effort and say something different: the author could very easily separate the MC (pre-gender bender & post-gender bender) into two characters, and make 2 novels centralized on these concepts.

From what I can tell, Astard aka pre-gender bent MC's life already ends with his sacrifice. As it stands, the author could flesh Astard & his adventurer party's journey, their rise of... more>> fame, and their final battle. Rather than reincarnating, his story ends with his death. However....

Merc aka post-gender bent MC could be converted into a standalone character who enjoys the peace from Astard's sacrifice. In essence, Merc's journey is basically the sequel to Astard's story.

Synopsis: "Elves don't leave their village for life, because they mistrust the outside world. Except for one thing: Merc is not like other elf girls. After learning about the Hero called Astard, Merc becomes indignantly curious about humanity. One day, she breaks taboo, and runs away from home. Of course, Merc knows that humans are cruel and pe*verted, so she trained herself to overpower any who intend to harass her. Follow Merc the Curious Elf as she follows traces of the late Astard, and his legendary adventurer party!"

I know the purpose of reincarnation + gender bend is to live a new life & leveraging your old life experience. However, I don't get that vibe at all: even though the author reminds me Astard & Merc are one and the same, I can't help but feel like they are separate people. <<less

It's a pretty standard japanese light novel fantasy story with reincarnation, adventurer guilds and OP protagonists...

But it's done well. What makes it an interesting read is how follows a typical fantasy trajectory but subverts expectations here and there. For instance, in the second arc we find that over the years of the protagonists' childhood, the Adventurer's guild system has changed quite a bit and now it requires both a recommendation and the passing of an exam to gain entry (Contrast that to the typical LN where an isekai'd protagonist can... more>> walk up to the nearest guild and get both admittance and an identity for what amounts to pennies). The justification for these changes are later explained and the world feels more like one with proper worldbuilding effort put into it.

The only flaw I'd point out is that it has typical JP WN/LN pacing, which means that in the 85 chapters that have been translated so far, we've only now started to get into the serious plot (as opposed to childhood/school arc type stuff) with actual antagonists.

Which is somewhat problematic considering that it's on hiatus at 126 chapters. <<less