Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Reviews

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic, Vol. 1

by

By KUROKATA and KeG. Released in Japan as “Chiyu Mahou no Machigatta Tsukaikata: Senjou wo Kakeru Kaifuku Youin” by MF Books. Released in North America by One Peace Books. Translated by Kristi Fernandez.

Last year I was at Anime NYC, and happened across the One Peace table. I admitted I had not reviewed any of their books, and asked which one they would recommend (not Shield Hero). This was the one they picked, so I picked up a copy. A year later, I’m about to head to Anime NYC again, and I felt, you know, I’d better read this or the conversation at the table’s going to be really awkward. The book did not really win me over from the start. Any time our main character starts a bo0ok by telling us how drab, generic and normal he is, I resist the urge to simply stop reading. As it turns out, though, there’s a few interesting ideas going on with this book, and by the time we’re one day into the fantasy world we know one thing for absolute certain: He is not remotely normal at all. That is a bald-faced lie.

Usato is (groan) An Ordinary High School Student (TM). One rainy day he runs into classmate and resident pretty boy Kazuki and student council president and perfect girl Suzune. Since someone took Usato’s umbrella, they walk with him … and suddenly a magical circle appears under them, and they’re summoned to another world to be heroes! Well, Kazuki and Suzune are summoned to be heroes. Usato was accidental. Kazuki has rare light magic! Suzune has powerful lightning magic! They decide to test Usato as well, because why not, and find… he has HEALING magic? Suddenly everyone in the throne room is terrified, and we soon find out why: Usato is abducted by an incredibly strong woman named Rose, who announces she’s going to be training him to be a healer! Of course, Rose’s training puts spartans to shame. What the heck is going on here?

This book knows exactly what genre it’s contrasting itself with. The king and his ministers are horrified and apologetic when Usato is accidentally summoned, and his isekai power turns out to be incredibly valuable. It’s the opposite of all those “useless power and thrown out of the castle with no money” books. Rose’s reason for the spartan training comes up near the end of the book, and it works psychologically. As does Usato’s dogged determination, as he finally gets a great opportunity to not just be some nebbish high school student. Best of all is Suzune, who turns out, once summoned, to be a massive otaku who had to hide it from everyone as she was a rich ojou-sama. Here she gets to live out her isekai fantasies, fire off cool final attacks with her lightning bolts, and flirt with the guy she likes. The last of these does not go well, alas, as Usato has Protagonist Syndrome, so thinks she’s kidding.

So I’m not incredibly sad I missed this when it came out – it is a very common genre, and I try not to read the standard ones unless they have a weird thing going on – but it was pleasant enough, and if I get a gap in my schedule I may read more. For isekai fans.

The Executioner and Her Way of Life: Wish Upon a Star, Pray to a Flower

by

By Mato Sato and nilitsu. Released in Japan as “Shokei Shoujo no Virgin Road” by GA Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jenny McKeon.

Well, back to reality. After a volume where I actually managed to enjoy it from beginning to end, we’re back to business as usual for The Executioner and Her Way of Life. The first 40% or so of this book is absolutely dire, and I was once again wondering why I had not dropped the series. The difficulty is that most of the people who remain in the cast are profoundly unlikable and selfish, and it’s not fun to read about them. This is also a book whose plot synopsis can best be summed up as “everyone is ignoring everyone else’s feelings and desires for the sake of their own”. Now, frequently this is understandable. The color soldiers are looking for a new homeland, and worry that this will cause the humans to try to eradicate them. (Correctly.) And Menou’s grand plan for saving Akari amounts to “kill myself”, so it’s not surprising that Momo is not down with that. Everyone is, frankly, at the end of their tether, and it shows.

Menou, Maya, and Sahara have fled to the Mechanical Society with Abbie’s help, but Michele, Momo and Hooseyard are hot on their trail, and trying to work out a way to break in there. Menou’s goal is the Starseed, but things prove more complicated than expected when they discover that another one of the Four Evils, Gadou, is still alive. After dealing with the fact that Gadou has literal split personalities, Menou puts her plan into action, despite the fact that her memory has gotten so bad that she’s forgotten Flare, Momo, and everything else about her past. Momo, meanwhile, has an Akari-in-a-Box, and a plan to get Menou and Akari both back with their memories attached, but this plan sort of relies on killing Menou first. Just for a bit. A little killing.

This book really does get good in the second half, as everyone starts to fight for their lives and their goals, and realize that there’s no way that everyone can end this alive. Indeed, Menou’s self-hatred and death wish is about all that’s fueling her now, and it helps the reader to sympathize with Momo a great deal, even when she tries to solve a problem by taking Akari from her luggage and hurling her at Menou’s head. Momo and Akari still hate each other, for obvious reasons. That said, Momo’s plan wouldn’t have worked without Akari, so they can at least be grateful for that. By the end of this book, most of the cast are almost back to normal and we’re at the end of the arc. If only Ashuna were back in the series I’d be perfectly happy. (Monkey’s Paw twitches) Oh no…

So yeah, Ashuna is the cliffhanger, and I am no longer happy. I suspect in this world that runs on war, death, and genocide, a lot of other people aren’t going to be happy either. Still, at least with Menou and Akari back to normal, there’s potential for more yuri in Book 10. Recommended, but be prepared for the traditional slow start. Also, warning, this book contains Hooseyard, and she’s still really annoying.

Bofuri: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, So I’ll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 16

by

By Yuumikan and KOIN. Released in Japan as “Itai no wa Iya nano de Bōgyoryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

Bofuri is, in the end, a series about what goes on inside a VRMMO, and most readers are here to follow the fun antics of Maple and Sally. Now, there are real players involved here, Kaede and Risa, and we have seen them on occasion. But we rarely have a chance to be in their heads for more than a couple of pages before we’re back in the gaming world seeing Maple eat a giant lump of poison. The series began with a brief mention that Risa had tried to get Kaede into some other games, but nothing clicked till New World Online. This volume, however, very definitely says the end is near. And as a result, we’re getting a little (very little) background into Kaede and Risa. Which is good! But given it’s the real world, we may actually get some real-life drama in Bofuri, the anti-consequences series. As frankly, Risa is starting to get very desperate about gaming with Kaede as much as possible before it’s too late.

Last time I said there would be an after-event recap of some sort, but nope. We’re straight into more gaming, as everyone goes around clearing dungeons, battling new monsters, and preparing for the 10th stratum. When that’s finally revealed, it’s shown to be the previous nine floors all in one – each section is one of the prior floors. The goal here is to Kill The Demon Lord, so Maple and Sally and the rest of Maple Tree start investigating to figure out how to do that. And they want to do it fast, as Maple and Sally have made things clear at last: they’re going to be third-year high school students soon, which means the days of gaming for hours a day are gone forever. It’s time to start getting serious about college.

It’s been clear from a while ago, and is made more explicit here, that Sally wants to fight Maple in a PvP battle, but holds off as she knows Maple doesn’t enjoy those. Maple is aware of this, though, and as their deadline draws near she’s starting to dwell on it more. She has no trouble fighting (and destroying) Frederica, mind you, but Sally is different. Back in the real world, not only is Risa anxious about those halcyon days with Kaede ending forever, but there’s also implications about Kaede’s past. We’d guessed that they’d been friends since they were kids, which is mentioned here without any detail. But now we hear how much Maple has changed since starting New World Online, and that she had never been so excited or enjoyed herself so much before. I want to know more about this! What was pre-Bofuri Kaede like? Was she bullied? Was she introverted? What’s going on here? And is there anything besides her latent crush and possibly different colleges that is the reason Risa is so desperate to enjoy this time with Kaede while she can?

There’s so much story I want to know about, and we get more of it here than most other volumes. But there’s still very little of it. Trust me, if you want to see Maple create poison copies of herself that explode, you’re also in the right place. Next time, probably more grinding and investigation.

Engaging with the Plot: A Former Cat’s Attempt to Save Her Now Temporary Fiancé, Vol. 1

by

By Usagi Hoshimi and Qi234. Released in Japan as “Konyakusha-sama ni wa Unmei no Heroine ga Arawaremasu ga, Zantei Konyaku Life wo Mankitsushimasu! Anata no Noroi, Kiraware Akujo no Watashi ga Toicha Dame desu ka?” by Earth Star Luna. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Minna Lin.

It’s always dangerous when you’re making stew. When you have something that’s just “let’s throw as many common ingredients into the pot as we can, stir it up, and eat that for supper”. A lot of the time it just ends up being an ugly, overcomplicated mess. Sometimes, though, all the ingredients manage to coalesce into something really tasty. You wouldn’t dare call it original – the exact opposite – but the common muck ends up being just what you wanted. We get that here. This is a villainess story with a capital V, having all the trimmings, and yet it works because it doesn’t take itself remotely seriously (at times I wondered if it was actually trying to be a parody) and because it has a really good story to tell about love, and what happens to people who get it and people who don’t.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but we open the book with our main character being dumped publicly by her fiance, the second prince. Lucille was well-meaning and did her princess lessons well, but she knew the princess didn’t love her and was trying much too hard to change that. Now she’s engaged to the “cursed marquess”. Felix. This causes her to pass out… and when she wakes up she has memories of her past… eight lives. Yes, this is her ninth life, but her first as a human. In the previous eight, she was a beloved pet cat of some of the most influential and powerful people in history. And what’s more, she has a prophecy, which shows her pissing off Felix, getting into dark magic, and being killed by the Saint who’ll be arriving in a year. Fortunately, with her past memories and her premonitions, she can change literally everything about this plot.

A lot of this just made me laugh. It’s always nice to see an isekai’d Japanese girl who’s part of the supporting cast rather than the lead – one of Lucille’s past owners was a reincarnator who loved her “smol” kitty. The second prince is a buffoon who cannot recognize that the beautiful woman in front of him is his ex-fiancee, just not wearing heavy makeup, and it just gets sillier and sillier as he rants. But there’s also some really good stuff here. Lucille, being an ex-cat, does not remotely worry about what anyone thinks of her and is very confident. And she’s surrounded by people who are filled with self-loathing or self-doubt, ranging from the cursed Marquess to her new friend Mary Hunt… erm, Alice Rohans, who suffers from being the normal one in a generation of geniuses, to her own father, who is caring but it comes out as uncaring. If there’s a weakness, it’s that the dialogue can seem a bit TOO overly elaborate. Sometimes these people speak as if they’re reading words off a page rather than being in the moment.

This has a second volume coming, which I assume will resolve the curse as well as the cliffhanger we saw. If you liked Lady Bumpkin, and you liked Bakarina, and wondered what would happen if you smashed them together, this is that book.

Lacey Longs for Freedom: The Dawn Witch’s Low-Key Life after Defeating the Demon King, Vol. 3

by

By Hyogo Amagasa and Kyouichi. Released in Japan as “Akatsuki no Majo Lacey wa Jiyū ni Ikitai” by Overlap Novels f. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Amanogawa Tenri.

This one snuck up on me. I was sort of gently mocking the book as I went through the first half, which is very much on the “low-key life” part of the title. Lacey invents oven mitts. Lacey invents a camera. But then it turns out that all of this, as well as the previous two books, are important as Lacey is asked to come back to the capital. And, while there’s a lot of backsliding and introverted panicking, the difference between the Lacey of the start of the first book and the one we see in this volume is night and day. She’s an incredibly powerful witch, and everyone and their brother want to use her. But while she does want to bring the kingdom happiness, she also wants the privilege of choosing how she is used. And people are taking notice. Best of all, Lacey finally cottons on to what her feelings for Wayne actually are. She’s not quite ready to do anything yet, but the feelings are recognized.

Wayne shows up at the village again, and this time he’s here for a full month, though he doesn’t say why. We see Lacey helping Cedric, who turns out to have a daughter who is getting married, and he wants to bake something special for the wedding but can’t figure out what. After the wedding, discussion of how the kids are having trouble remembering what the dress looked like makes Lacey want to create photography, which she does through a wonderful series of trial and error and the help of her phoenix. Finally, though, Wayne reveals why he’s there. The princess (you know, the one who cheated with Lacey’s fiancee in Book 1) is getting married, but has locked herself in her room right before the wedding. The king is asking Lacey to help do something about that. But why is the princess there in the first place?

After getting a fairly typical “evil noble” in the last book, the most refreshing part of this one is seeing how it handles the prior antagonists. The King is mindboggled by how much Lacey has changed from just a year away from saving the world and being the Dawn Witch. Alicia, the princess, already fully regrets her philandering, but being married off to a foreign prince (who’s fine, at least) has her lonely and homesick before she even leaves. Heck, we even get a side story showing that Raymond, whose fault all of this really is, has gotten used to life on the farm where he’s been exiled too, and is even coming through with delicious vegetables. If there’s a weak spot in the series, it continues to be Wayne, who I sort of but not really wish would be found to have a dark side, or a secret he hasn’t revealed. He’s just this bland guy.

But we’re not here for him, we’re here for Lacey, and she’s fun. She also reminds me of Monica, so Silent Witch fans should also get this. The next volume, which should wrap the series up, is not out in Japan yet.

Reincarnated As a Sword, Vol. 1

by

By Yuu Tanaka and Llo. Released in Japan as “Tensei Shitara Ken deshita” by GC Novels. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Mike Rachmat. Adapted by Jaymee Goh.

When this book first came out in 2019, I read about 25 pages of it and stopped, abandoning the book as I really didn’t like it. I mentioned this recently to some other folks, whose reaction was mostly “wait, you didn’t even get to the catgirl?”Sure enough, I guess there is a catgirl on the cover. And as I deal with a slow August, I thought that maybe I had just been in a bad mood that day, and I started the book again, determined to finish it. Well, I did finish it. And it definitely does improve when Fran shows up. But I also was not wrong back in 2019. This might be the worst start to a popular light novel series I have ever read. Our hero is annoying, he’s overly chuuni, he kills a lot of monsters without remorse (oddly, he gets the remorse later, after meeting Fran), and there’s also a ton of stat counting. And, of course, “Oh, I guess this world has slavery.” Said like you’re going to the deli.

Our sword protagonist, who doesn’t even remember his old name, is hit by… a sports car (not a truck!) and wakes up in a fantasy world as a magic sword. He spends the first eighty pages or so of this book trying out cool powers, defeating increasingly dangerous monsters, being being incredibly smug and annoying. Unfortunately, he then ends up stuck in a land that saps mana, and can no longer move around. Cue Fran, a catgirl who’s part of a group of slaves who ran into monsters. After taking care of the monsters, and the slave owner, Fran and the sword (who she names “Teacher”) team up, and head to the nearest large city. From this point the book gets far more generic and predictable, which is actually a point in its favor. The writer stops trying to make the sword entertaining and focuses instead on the sword trying to teach Fran how to get strong and also possibly not become a sociopath.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Aren’t I a huge fan of A Late-Start Tamer’s Laid-Back Life, by the same author? I am indeed. Oddly, the books seemingly start off very similar, with our main character going around, experimenting, and looking at their stats go up when they do things. The Tamer book, though, is actually a GAME, not reality, so I don’t need to apply the same morality to it. Yuta’s experimentation, due to his class, avoids fighting for the most part, while the sword’s revels in it. Yuta is generally nice to everyone and gives away things without realizing their value. The sword eventually starts to realize that killing goblins while literally imitating Stormbringer is perhaps a bit too evil, but since this is a world where all monsters are default evil, he doesn’t dwell on this too much. At least he doesn’t lech on Fran, who is only twelve years old. Her stoicness, while clearly the result of trauma, also makes her more interesting in contrast to her partner.

So yes, this gets better. I’m sure later volumes are interesting. But I’d rather stick needles in my eyes than read the start of this book again. Moving on.

Too Many Losing Heroines!, Vol. 5

by

By Takibi Amamori and Imigimuru. Released in Japan as “Make Heroine ga Ōsugiru!” by Gagaga Bunko. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Matthew Jackson. Adapted by Hayame.

Given that this is a series that, about half the time, frames itself as a parody of the standard light novel high school harem genre, I should not have been surprised with the outcome of this volume. And yet. I was surprised. I had certainly seen the previous four volumes, showing Nukumizu’s sister Kaju as, shall we say, dangerously obsessed with her brother, but other series have also done that (looking at you, Goodbye Overtime), and have known that it’s OK to show them as being far too close for a brother and a sister without saying straight out “there is sexual desire here, this is meant to be incestuous for real”. Losing Heroines goes there, and so this comes as a content warning for those who might be put off. That said, I think most who would be put off wouldn’t have gotten this far into the series anyway, and it’s not as if Nukumizu has the ability to understand anyone’s attraction to him, much less his sister.

It’s time for the middle school students to visit prospective high schools, and that means our protagonists have to show off what makes their school great. For some this is easy due to talent (Lemon, who may be held back a grade but boy can she run). For some it’s easy due to personality (Anna, despite her foibles, can be outgoing and personable). The literature club is in trouble, though, with its two introverts who hate dealing with others. Nukumizu, however, has other problems. It’s Valentine’s Day soon. He heard his sister recently on the phone talking about… a guy! And she’s got plans in the calendar the siblings share that imply dates! She’s 14, that’s far too young to date, surely! Everyone else tells him he’s overthinking this, but they’re not getting through to him, as he’s in full big-brother mode. Hijincks, of course, ensue.

As always this is a well-written book, with a lot of laugh out loud gags. Anna is funny whenever she opens her mouth, and her chocolate cannonball was deserving of the interstitial art it got. Nukumizu, as always, is so good at reading the hidden subtext of most of the relationships of others around him that he fails to see the actual TEXT of girls throwing themselves at him. He is told by his friend Ayano that he needs to realize how he looks to everyone around him who doesn’t have the full story, and Nukumizu… brushes him off. And let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Not only does Kaju provide a story for the literature club about a brother who has knocked up his little sister, but she’s also really desperate to help her friend Gondou with her own doomed relationship, despite the fact that Gondou knows that Kaju is really thinking about herself. She knows she can’t have sex with her brother. She knows he just sees her as family. And, as this volume makes explicit, she HATES that.

Now that we’ve unlocked the barn door and let the horses out, I assume that she’s going to get more blatant in future volumes, which does not thrill me. But she also won’t be the focus, so I’ll bear with it for now. For romcom diehards and people who don’t understand why I don’t like that sweet, sweet incest.

The Poison King: Now That I’ve Gained Ultimate Power, the Bewitching Beauties in My Harem Can’t Get Enough of Me, Vol. 1

by

By LeonarD and Won. Released in Japan as “Doku no Ou: Saikyou no Chikara ni Kakuseishita Ore wa Biki-tachi wo Shitagae, Hatsujou Harem no Aruji to Naru” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Boris Lecourt.

This wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d hoped, alas. For the third of my “go back and try a JNC series I skipped”, I decided to try this series, which kind of repulsed me when I saw it licensed. I was supposed to be explicit, and I was expecting a lot of ridiculously bad prose. Alas, only one or two speeches really lived down to that, and for the most part it was a standard ecchi power fantasy. And so, in the spirit of not ordering a milkshake at Home Depot, I will review this for what it is rather than what it is not. What is it? It’s a series to read if you like cool guys using martial arts and poison powers to kill bad guys, and also using pheromones to seduce all the women around him and take them to bed. Where it will cut away right before the actual act. Sorry, there’s always AO3.

Years ago, the hero’s party, including a man and his wife, defeat the evil poison queen. Sadly, as she dies, she curses the wife, who is now dying herself. Their “friend” Faust (subtle this book is not) has a solution: the wife is pregnant with twins, so they can all survive if one of the twins gets the curse. What no one expects is the twin to survive. Thirteen years later, the wife is dead, and our hero, Caim, is living in a hovel outside a village, where he is abused every day for being cursed. His dad threw him out when his mother died. The only friend he has is his very very loyal maid. Then one day Faust comes by with a possible cure… and he meets the Poison Queen, who tries to possess him. When she fails, he ends up now being able to control his powers and aging five years. Time to go get some payback.

So, how to sell this series… Aside from some overwrought monologues when Caim is killing bad guys, which read more like him being a chuuni than anything else, and another girl pissing herself in fear (a trope I hate, and which the author admits in the afterword is there for fetish reasons, so bleah), this is not all that different from a typical male power fantasy book. Caim, after his plot-relevant age-up, is cool and powerful but also does not lose occasionally acting like the 13-year-old he was until recently, especially when trying to deal with love (not sex, love) or fantastic panoramic landscapes. The love interests, so far, are a) devoted maid, b) noble princess turned into enthusiastic hedonist, and c) tsundere girl who loves being spanked/insulted. They’re actually not too bad. They don’t turn meek, and he doesn’t take any advantage of him they don’t want to, except when his pheromones are doing what the plot requires. And he also punches some Nazis… erm, nobles. I always like that.

Basically, if you are looking for a book with a lot of sex, this will probably frustrate you. If you are looking for a book with a lot of boobs, suggested sex, and a cool guy living his best life, this is certainly one of them. You could do worse.

D-Genesis: Three Years after the Dungeons Appeared, Vol. 1

by

By KONO Tsuranori and ttl. Released in Japan as “D Genesis: Dungeon ga Dekite 3-nen” by Enterbrain. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by JCT.

This was the second recommendation by folks when I was asking about series I hadn’t tried before, and this one was far more vocal and vociferous than The Frontier Lord Begins with Zero Subjects. People really, really pushed hard for this series. When it was licensed, I was simply absolutely sick to death of dungeons, so did not bother to read it, despite the fact that it had an obvious sell on the cover art: Noa Izumi. OK, that’s not actually Noa Izumi, but close enough, frankly. I do hope Miyoshi pilots a Labor before this ends. That said, the people selling me on this series turned out to be absolutely correct: this was very, very good. I will be reading more. The main reason it’s very good is that there is minimal dungeon crawling. It’s all about the “what if” concept of dungeons appearing all over the modern-day world, how they would be regulated, and what happens when our heroes accidentally find a game-changer but want to stay having a normal life?

3 years ago, dungeons appeared all over the world, leading to a new industry. Today, Keigo Yoshimura is currently in a horrible R&D job where he is being abused by his middle-management boss. Then one day he’s part of a bad traffic accident. He’s not injured, but it turns out a dungeon opened up in the street. He accidentally runs over a goblin (thus making him eligible for dungeon rewards), and then accidentally pushes a huge mass of rebar into the dungeon, where it drops aaallllll the way to the bottom. This clears the dungeon, and makes him the top dungeon clearer in the world. He knows he does not want to be famous for this. Fortunately, his co-worker, kohai, and bestie Azusa Miyoshi finds out about this, and about the skill he picked up by clearing it: he can essentially analyze dungeons and figure out how to get whatever he needs. The days of random drops are over! And now he *really* has to try to hide.

The worldbuilding is pretty good. I didn’t hate it. It’s perhaps a bit unrealistic that our protagonists are allowed to do this, but the author freely admits that’s part of the fiction. The best reason to read this are the two leads, who are terrific. Keigo is the sort of guy who tends to narrate cynical but also tries to help everyone he can – which in this book is mostly young attractive women, this is still a light novel. That said, he has absolutely no filter and says everything he thinks, so I do not expect romance anytime soon. Miyoshi has known him for a while, so is clearly used to him. She’s a math genius and also a food/drink gourmet, so she is very interested in helping him so that she can get rich and get the best food and wine. They’re also having fun examining stats, seeing what the unknown drops actually do, killing slimes for 300 … erm, slimes till they discover what that does, and healing grievous injuries in a very secret, don’t tell anyone way.

I assume the second book is going to have more people get involved in their lives, and no doubt will have more dungeon crawling (there’s a big wolf on the cover, for one). And I warn people that there is considerable math in this. In any case, my bad. This is a great series so far, and I will try to fit the other, erm, eight volumes to date in my schedule when I can.

The Frontier Lord Begins with Zero Subjects: The Blue-Horned Maiden

by

By Fuurou and Kinta. Released in Japan as “Ryoumin 0-nin Start no Henkyou Ryoushu-sama” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Hengtee Lim.

I had reached a brief period in my giant pile of reviews where I had a gap in my schedule, so asked folks what books they might want me to try that I had skipped before. This one came up first, so I gave it a try. It’s not bad. I have a few issues with one or two of the subplots (see below), but overall this fits in nicely in the “I arrive in a new place and slowly accumulate people who adore me” slow life genre. If there’s one big objection that I have to the books, it’s that the chapter titles are all locations. The Next Day, By the River. A Week Later, At the Yurt. If you’re that desperate, there’s always the option of just leaving it at numbers, you know? That said, the chapter titles don’t give much away as a result. Except that there’s a yurt. Which makes sense, given that this setting feels very much like fantasy Mongolia.

Dias, an orphan who strives to live up to his parents’ last words to him, is the hero of the most recent war, and is very much in need of a reward. The nobility decide to grant him a domain. They take him out to the middle of nothing but grassy plains, leave him with no food or water, and say “everything you can see is yours”. Then they leave. You can tell they are SWELL GUYS. He finds water, then decides to just sleep where he is. He then wakes up to find a teenage girl with a blue horn on her head (hence the subtitle) angrily asking him who he is. It turns out this land is actually part of her oni clan’s, and they’ve been at war with the city he came from for some time. That said, her horn is also a lie detector of a sort, and she can see he has nothing but good intentions. Which confuses her. See, Dias wants to be a good frontier lord. Even if he’s not sure how to do this.

Dias is one of those big dumb guys who’s good at fighting provided he doesn’t have to think (he uses a giant axe), but as it turns out he’s not all that dumb, he just tends to take time to think things through. I was fairly sure that Alna would be the tsundere sort who would slowly warm up to him over the course of the series, but I could not have been more wrong. Their tribe prizes strength over everything, and when this guy not only takes out a huge number of fantasy bison but also a dragon (or, as he insists, a giant turtle), she falls in love almost immediately, and they’re engaged (he refuses to let them be married till she’s of age) by the middle of the book. My one grump is that not once, but twice, we get situations where we think there will be slaves sold, only to be told “no, there is a lot of slavery, but these people are not slaves because _____”. As a result, Dias ends up adopting twin daughters, and a nearby sympathetic lord has a harem of adoring women. Both subplots could honestly have happened without slavery. You can just… not write the background slavery.

So overall, this was pretty good. I’m not sure I have a huge desire to read more, but if you like the genre it’s definitely worth a shot.

Taking My Reincarnation One Step at a Time: No One Told Me There Would Be Monsters!, Vol. 8

by

By KAYA and Naru. Released in Japan as “Tensei Shōjo wa Mazu Ippo kara Hajimetai: Mamono ga Iru toka Kiitenai!” by MF Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Amy Osteraas.

Of all the series I was expecting to parallel the main plot in this one, Though I Am an Inept Villainess is perhaps not the most obvious choice. But it does make sense. Sara has had a life in Japan where she spent most of it ill and not being a real kid, and then she ended up in this world and spent almost all of it also not being a normal kid. Even when she met up with Allen, who is himself nothing like real children in this world, they both act relatively mature, and they’re both surrounded by adults most of the time. And now they’re 17, which is to say they’re adults in this world, but have not quite mastered the emotional heft needed to survive as an adult. As a result, when a traumatic event happens to both of them, they have their first big fight. And everyone around them suffers. Because these are GOOD KIDS.

Now that Nelly and Chris are married, they have the perfect choice for a honeymoon: go explore a dungeon, of course. And they take Allen and Sara along with them. Unfortunately, the deep floor of the dungeon turns out to be filled with gargoyles, which badly injure Chris and Nelly and give Allen near fatal injuries, which Sara has to treat by giving him a potion that either works pretty well or hastens death. Allen survives, but as it turns out he has to “take it easy” for a month or else he’ll never get back his old strength. Unfortunately, medical research is still mostly in its infancy in this world, so no one knows what “take it easy” really entails. Meanwhile, Sara, who has her barriers, was perfectly safe throughout this. Allen is realizing that “strong enough to protect her” is going to need a big re-definition.

I do appreciate that the book does not make this ENTIRELY Allen’s fault. Just mostly his fault. It’s about an 80-20 split. The main issue is that the only ones who still see Allen and Sara as kids are Allen and Sara themselves. Everyone around them assumes they’re going to be married in a few months, but the two of them still can’t quite make that jump, and when Sara goes to the capital alone, without Allen, it’s a game changer for her, and everyone comments on it and realizes exactly what’s happened. It must be depressing when everyone around you knows you better than you know yourself. In any case, Sara is a full-fledged apothecary with little more to be taught, Allen is learning how to fight properly as opposed to the hand-wavey bullshit way Nelly fights, and they are developing careers. Settling down will soon need to be a thing.

Unfortunately, the next book seems to start a new, non-romantic arc. Well, I suppose that’s fine. This is a great series. And it had a good amount of wolves this time, too!

The Hired Heroine Wants the Villainess to Gloat

by

By Hanami Nishine and . Released in Japan as “Yatoware Heroine wa Akuyaku Reijou ni Zamaa Saretai” on the Shousetsuka ni Narou website. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Jordan Taylor.

I was somewhat baffled at this single-volume series after reading it. On researching the title further, I am slightly less baffled. It came out in 2019, which is not in the first wave of Villainess titles, but right after, which is why it tries to play with the form a little. It’s also one of the CIW titles that they licensed directly from the author, and only seems to have appeared on the Narou website. A lot of webnovels are written on the fly. They’re week to week. They’re messy. And when they get picked up by a publisher, they tend to get heavily rewritten. This is still in the “messy” stage. It starts off almost as a broad comedy, and gradually starts to get a bit tragic as we begin to understand our hired heroine, who just wants to live happily with her mom but sometimes life doesn’t let you get what you want. Her messiness makes this interesting.

Nina Scaglione has been reincarnated in this world form Japan, but her memories are vague (she *thinks* she may have lived in the country as the daughter of a rice farmer) and she’s not remotely noble. She lives as a commoner with her mother, who is dying and in pain. Her father is also dead. Then suddenly a talking cat shows up, and tries to make a deal with her. She can’t cure her mom, but she can get medicine that will ease her mom’s pain for as long as she has. In return, she has to play out this other girl’s “otome game villainess” fantasies and be the “heroine”, who is there to be a commoner, seduce the prince, and then get publicly shunned at graduation like all the best villainess books. There are a few problems here. The first is that the prince is uninterested in her, and she in him. The second is that this villainess is really, really dim.

At first I was certain this book was a comedy. This villainess, Clarissa, is a master class at “did not think this through”, and can’t even pour a bucket of water over the heroine without screwing it up. Nina’s attempts at being the heroine are helped along by this world’s “heroine powers”, which means everyone who has not co-signed a contract with God thinks that everything she does is wonderful and perfect, and this can also get very amusing. That said, as the book goes on, Nina’s life starts to get worse and worse. Things are not helped by Nina herself, who is very much in the “I am so plain and no one would be attracted to me” school of light novel protagonists. There are some real tear-jerking scenes later on, even as the book gradually manages to barrel along its narrative. That said, the book does end happily ever after, kinda sorta if everyone works art it. Even for the villainess, who is rather flummoxed by all this.

So yes, I don’t regret reading this, and enjoyed Nina’s struggles. But it’s a mess.

Notorious No More: The Villainess Enjoys Feigning Incompetence, Vol. 1

by

By Hanako Arashi and Wan Hachipisu. Released in Japan as “Kitai no Akujo, Sandome no Jinsei de “Musai Munou” wo Tanoshimu” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Jeremy Browning.

This volume is plotted out in a very odd way, though I did end up quite enjoying it. The backstory of our villainess is quickly tossed off in about a page or two, as if it’s totally irrelevant – though it’s not, and I really want to find out what actually happened in the past. The feigning incompetence part is also given short shrift, as is the “everyone at school bullies her” part. That’s all just setup for the bulk of the book, which is a test that rapidly turns into a “death game” sort of environment. But this too is a sequel to something we only see in a side story at the end, as our heroine and her fellow low-ranking students all share a close bond of trust and are a fantastic team. What, you may ask, is this book interested in, then? This book is interested in taking shallow, arrogant nobles and destroying them.

Beljeanne was, so it is said, a cruel and heartless villainess who tried to kill her rival by summoning a demon. She was killed, and reincarnated as a Japanese girl. There, she went through school, work, getting married, having children, and dying happily at the age of 86. Whereupon she is reincarnated back in her original world, two generations later. as the granddaughter of the rival she supposedly tried to have killed. With ALL her memories, of course. What’s more, her mother enjoys hitting her, her father is indifferent, her brother is priggish, and her adopted sister is the “otome game heroine who’s evil because this is a villainess book” sort of girl. Clearly there is one thing that she can do in order to get the life she wants. Yes, it’s time for sandbagging.

Given that this book has a long sequence where Laviange ends up wreaking her revenge against all the nobles who have wronged her in this life, you may be wondering how I felt about it, given that Livid Lady had a similar plot and I hated it. But Notorious No More is very careful to only go after the specific people who deserve it. The noble who is killed off in this book because of Laviange’s actions tried to use mind control magic to brainwash her while they were in a dangerous area surrounded by powerful monsters. She’s very good at being nice to those who deserve it – the one good member of that team is not only spared by Laviagne but also used as fodder for the romance novels she writes as a side job – but those who have sinned against her are (with one exception) not offered second chances. We see the second prince, who has not only bullied her but is also being seduced by her stepsister – gradually realize that he’s been a complete piece of shit and trying to fix it. He fails. Fortunately, he’s only the second prince.

How much you like this book likely depends on how much you like protagonists taking down anyone they don’t like, but the people she doesn’t like are terrible, so I’m down with it. Hopefully in the next book we might find out what really happened in her first life. For smug villainess fans.

The Devil Princess, Vol. 1

by

By Harunohi Biyori and Geso Umiu. Released in Japan as “Akuma Koujo” by K Lanove Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Julie Goniwich. Adapted by Emlyn Dornemann.

Well, that sure went places. I mean, the basic premise suggested that it would. The author did too, as this author is also responsible for The Otome Heroine’s Fight for Survival, which is definitely a series that Goes Places. But I admit, I was kind of taken in by the narrator, as is often meant to happen. The reason unreliable narrators are a popular literary device with authors is that we are meant to trust them. it’s what narrators are FOR. First-person narrators are there to be the POV character, the one you root for, mostly. Sometimes they’re bad people, but they still are fun to read. And our heroine Yulucia is fun to read. She starts off the book as a classic “dying in the hospital from weakness” Japanese girl, then ends up as a little demon slime, who rapidly, without knowing it, becomes a far more powerful demon. She becomes the crush of the most powerful demon there is. And then she decides she wants to be human. And this is where the story really starts.

So yeah, as noted above, our little demon suddenly finds that she is a human baby. She’s also spoiled rotten… and kept from doing anything at all… so it’s hard to figure out what’s actually going on with her family. Eventually, as she grows older, she learns that she tends to terrify people who are not her immediate family and staff, likely due to her demon past. She also has tremendously powerful holy magic, and also summoning magic, which she thinks is also due to being a former demon, but the local religious folks think may make her a Saint. Eventually they can’t put it off any more, and she is allowed to go out and socialize, and make friends with other… noble children? Wait, is he the prince? Just how important is her family? And then, of course, she’s kidnapped. And THIS is where the story REALLY starts.

So the main reason I found this so fascinating is trying to figure out along with Yulucia exactly what kind of world she is now living in. It’s pretty apparent from the start that she’s rich and probably nobility, but her dad is rarely around, she’s not allowed to leave the house, and her mother also never leaves the house. She also has a head maid with powerful healing magic, which is rare for adults. And, oh yes, she’s so inhumanly gorgeous that she looks like a perfect doll rather than a human, and everyone around her is either immediately taken with her or repulsed. The other good thing about the book is Yulucia’s determination to be human, as she worries that she’s still a demon underneath, due to being scary and inhumanly beautiful and being unable to taste most food. I don’t want to spoil the last quarter of the book, but let’s just say that her issues get resolved in a big way, and your jaw will drop. I suspect things will escalate as this series goes on.

This is 5 volumes so far in Japan, so there’s certainly a lot more “and this is where the story really starts” we can get. Please keep surprising me, Devil Princess.

Though I Am an Inept Villainess: Tale of the Butterfly-Rat Body Swap in the Maiden Court, Vol. 9

by

By Satsuki Nakamura and Kana Yuki. Released in Japan as “Futsutsuka na Akujo dewa Gozaimasu ga: Suuguu Chouso Torikae Den” by Ichijinsha Novels. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Tara Quinn.

So yes, there is a cliffhanger. Sorry. However, the cliffhanger does not mean this particular arc is ongoing. Everything hanging from the last few volumes about this arc is dealt with here, thankfully. But yeah, this was, from what I hear, supposed to be the finale, but the series got popular, so the author was asked to continue it. And it works pretty well, though I will admit that I do grow a bit weary of the “you can’t trust anyone, can you” aspect to some of this series. There is also a lengthy flashback explaining the Emperor’s past and why he’s been so gung ho about sorcerers. It’s well handled, but I’m going to be honest, I read this series for two characters, and the Emperor is neither of those two. Any time we cut away from Reirin and Keigetsu, I begin to lose interest. And that’s because they’re so dynamic and vibrant that I can’t look away.

After rescuing Reirin from her near drowning, the cast get together to check their notes and explain exactly what’s going on. We find that the Emperor’s older brother, the only sibling who actually gave a damn about him, was assassinated as part of the massive throne war that was going on. Assassinated by a sorcerer, who had been let out of prison expressly for that purpose. And the sorcerer then got away, so the Emperor has spent the last twenty-five years searching high and low. Fortunately, Reirin spots a way that they might be able to talk the Emperor down and convince him that Keigetsu can help him. But to do that, they’re going to need to pull off another really good acting job. Which is a shame, as everyone knows that when Reirin tries to imitate Keigetsu, she’s been failing miserably.

The main reason this book is fantastic is the fight that’s been coming for a while now between Reirin and Keigetsu. After the events of Book 8, Reirin thinks that Keigetsu is making other friends, and thus doesn’t need her any more. Which, unfortunately, triggers Reirin’s tendency to use “and then I sacrifice my life” as her Plan A all the time, which causes Keigetsu to lash out, scream in anger and say “I hate you”. We are reminded that these girls may be consorts in not-China, but they’re also teenage girls who have grown up unable to express emotions like normal kids. As a result, Reirin needs to be sat down and have it patiently explained to her that Keigetsu is, in fact, still her best friend and would be very upset if she died, and Keigetsu has to have it explained to her that Reirin has the emotional sensitivity of toast when it comes to their friendship, and thus cannot read between the “I’m worried about you!” lines that Keigetsu is throwing at her. They make up. It’s great. Reirin possibly overcompensates, but that’s not a surprise. But hey, everything solved…

…OK, no, there’s a cliffhanger, and so not QUITE everything is solved. Still, this was great, except the bits not about our two heroines, which was merely good.