The Lapis Lazuli Crown, Volume 1
Guest Review: The Lapis Lazuli Crown, Vol. 1
By Natsuna Kawase
Published by CMX
Review by Megan M.
In a world that seems to combine standard high fantasy with modern day Japan, roughly one in every five people is born with magical abilities. For some, magic comes easily, but others have to work hard at it their entire lives. Miel comes from a family with a history of magic and her older sister, Sara, is a powerful sorceress, but she isn’t very good at magic herself. She is, however, unusually strong, and when she accidentally clobbers a boy, Radi, with her handbag, he asks her to show him around town. Inevitably, Radi is revealed to be Radian, the heartthrob prince, operating in disguise to uncover a criminal ring abducting young women.
Miel is a fairly normal shoujo heroine with tsundere tendencies. As Radian, Radi appears to by a normal perfect, charming, dull shoujo prince. As Radi, he’s a typical sweet and goofy (but with hidden depths) shoujo hero. Individually, neither is overly involving or original but together they’re very endearing. Both only seem to really be comfortable with each other and Miel seems to be pretty well aware that she actually isn’t sure which personality is “real.”
I’m annoyed that, inevitably, Radi/Radian is extremely skilled and always the one to save the day, while Miel isn’t good with magic and is actually ashamed of her strength. By the end of the volume, however, she’s made considerable progress with her magic and seems to be more comfortable with her strength, which Radi/Radian actually thinks is cool. This is more enjoyable than it is technically good and there’s little consistent plot beyond Miel repeatedly stumbling across Radi/Radian while he’s in disguise somewhere, and her determination to get better at magic so she can go to the palace. This is, I believe, also only two volumes long, so I doubt a plot will develop.
There’s also a short story titled “Daisy Romance” at the end of the volume. I say “short,” but it actually takes up roughly a fourth of the volume. It’s set in what looks to be Japan’s Taisho era. In it, a young woman named Asagi becomes involved with a Robin Hood-like thief named New Moon. A less-philanthropic thief has been impersonating New Moon and has targeted Asagi and her mother. “Daisy Romance” relies on similar tropes as “The Lapis Lazuli Crown”-specifically the hero having at least two identities and always saving the day, and the heroine being determined to discover the hero’s “true” self-but I would actually be even more interested in reading more of Asagi and New Moon’s adventures than Miel and Radi/Radian’s. This, I suspect, is due to the setting and overexposure to Robin Hood retellings in my youth, as those are the main differences between the two stories.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
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