This reads like it should have been a VN.

Disclaimer: I haven't played a VN or partook in this genre.

It's a mu*der mystery set in a weird school in the middle of the ocean in a world of swords and magic and guns and the divine.

It is quite slow to start, and the beginning is really hard to read, with the shift between dreams/recollections and reality being hard to distinguish, which I don't know if it's due to the source text or the translation, or both, but doesn't make it more... more>> enjoyable.

Once you get past that and start to understand the story though, it is pretty OK. That's why it's a 3 (for now). It cannot be said to be bad, I think, but also cannot be said to be good, or especially good. Again, it reads like it should have been a VN.

To give you a perhaps easier time, some characters (or just their names) introduction: Arma—protagonist, male; Theodore—character 1, male, mage; Shirley—character 2, female, friend; Judith—character 3, female, friend; Arthur—character 4, male, friend of Theodore; Machina—character 5, female, student council president... this should get you started. There's more characters as the story progresses.

Yes, at first it wasn't even obvious what the name of the main character was...

I'm not yet hooked enough to buy the chapters on the publisher's site and read via MTL (also MTL for the first chapters were pretty illegible), but this has a lot of good reviews on the publishing site. "It's quite OK, keep going" would be my final rating at this stage.

The mystery nature + starting in the middle of it (already friends with two of the characters) makes it hard for me to give a verdict before the plot finishes. There is development with characters which I hope would continue, but until there is enough depth revealed and developed I cannot say for sure it is good. <<less