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Reviews

If the Villainess and Villain Met and Fell in Love ~ She Was All But Disowned for Her Spirit Contract, But She’s Still Competing with Her Rival ~, Vol. 2

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By Harunadon and Yomi Sarachi. Released in Japan as “Akuyaku Reijō to Akuyaku Reisoku ga, Deatte Koi ni Ochitanara: Nanashi no Seirei to Keiyaku Shite Oidasareta Reijō wa, Kyō mo Reisoku to Kisoiatte Iru Yō Desu” by GA Novels. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Judy Jordan.

Last time, I said I enjoyed this more than I expected because it was a lot darker than I expected. The darkness doesn’t go away in the second book, but there’s a slight problem that makes this volume not quite as enjoyable. The book is also trying to be a sweet romance between Brigitte and Yuri, and it feels a bit jarring when put next to everything else that’s happened in the book. I would normally roll my eyes at Brigitte panicking and running away from Yuri with a red face, because it’s something we see in so many shoujo romances, but here I’m thinking “well, of course, this is all related to her trauma from everything that’s happened to her since she was five”. Which, there’s nothing wrong with that, but the author clearly is NOT expecting the reader to think that. The author is writing “look, isn’t she adorable?”.

Brigitte goes to visit Yuri’s home, where she meets his family (much to his chagrin), and also his other spirit, who gives her a handy tip as to why she can’t communicate or summon her spirit: it’s a fire spirit, and after her father’s actions as a child she’s terrified of fire. She tries to solve this by getting herself used to fire despite her fear, which doesn’t really go all that well, possibly as, when she reflects on everything that has happened since that incident, it’s not fire she’s afraid of: it’s everything. (Pantophobia!) This revelation causes her magic to simply explode into a giant pillar into the sky, seen by the entire kingdom, and when it settles down, she has a spirit! OK, it looks like a tiny yellow chick, and OK, she still can’t really communicate with it. But baby steps.

Not to spoil too much, but this would appear to be the last we see of Prince Joseph in this series, and holy shit I am so glad. If the series balances too far in one direction for cutesy romance scenes with Brigitte’s embarrassment taking center stage, Joseph is the opposite direction, as everything about him is awful and creepy. It’s laid out why pretty well – he grew up not being as good as his brothers, so wanted someone “stupider” around him to feel superior towards, then he had to manipulate Brigitte’s behavior when it turned out she wasn’t what he wanted. Worse, it turns out he really DOESN’T want someone genuinely dim – i.e. Lisa (who earns a few points here by stopping an attempted murder suicide) but merely a doormat. His last scene tosses in rape threats, murder threats, and a whole lot of arson, and he absolutely gets what’s coming to him, but again – this book needs to commit. Either be dark, or be cute, but the dissonance is too strong.

That said, inevitably Joseph is not the Big Bad, the Big Bad is the cause of all this bullshit, and he’s here for the nasty cliffhanger to this volume. I guess that ensures that the dissonance isn’t going away yet. If you can put up with it, this has some strong individual scenes.

Villainess Level 99: I May Be the Hidden Boss but I’m Not the Demon Lord, Vol. 4

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By Satori Tanabata and Tea. Released in Japan as “Akuyaku Reijō Level 99: Watashi wa Ura Boss Desu ga Maō dewa Arimasen” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by sachi salehi.

The anime is currently airing as I type this up, and it’s quite enjoyable, if very low budget. It’s also doing something very sensible, which a lot of series are doing lately: it’s adapting the manga, not the light novel. This is obvious if you watch any scene with Alicia, who is simply far more sympathetic and nice in the manga than she ever was in the LN. I’m not sure how the manga resolves the Alicia plotline, if it’s even gotten to that point yet, But I remember how the light novel did, with Alicia essentially under house arrest, and still traumatized by the finale of the first book. And, as it turns out, the author was rather jealous of how Alicia was handled in the manga. And so, after taking a couple of books off, Alicia returns for this new book. Unfortunately, this is still the light novel version of Alicia, which means that the reunion is more pathetic than anything else.

After resolving issues with her alternate universe self, there’s not really much standing between Yumiella and Patrick’s wedding… except for Yumiella, who suddenly realizes that a large wedding is exactly the sort of thing she doesn’t want. Given this, she naturally decides to fly to the moon. This doesn’t work out, so instead she plummets into the neighboring country of Lemlaesta… which you may recall is the country that Patrick’s mother despises. There she meets a man named Gilbert, who looks a lot like Patrick. And he has the same name as Patrick’s brother, something which Patrick just told Yumiella before all of this insanity happened. Naturally, she doesn’t recognize him. Incredibly, she also manages to fool (?) him into thinking she’s not Yumiella. Can the two densest people alive possibly manage to stop a war?

How much you enjoy this book may depend on how much you can tolerate Yumiella being even more of an airhead than usual. The anime reminds me just how far off the rails she’s gotten since the first volume, and she now rarely if ever manages to descend to anything resembling reality. There are a few times when I just wanted to throttle her, particularly when she tried to jump to the moon to run away from her problems. On the bright side, sometimes Yumiella being this dense really is very funny, and once you get behind the idea that she and Gilbert don’t know who the other one is, despite the 87 billion clues each one has, you just roll with it and laugh. And yes, Alicia comes back. More interesting than her actions in this book (which are predictable as hell) is the fact that she’s being trained to be a weapon that will be deployed in case the country’s bomb (Yumiella) goes off. I’d feel bad for her if it weren’t for, well… (waves hand at everything Alicia does in this book).

I didn’t even mention Yumiella measuring her new level, which leads to some of the best jokes but also sets up the final confrontation. Oh yes, and Yumiella sprouting wings like an Evangelion shout out. In any case, despite Yumiella starting to get a bit *too* dense, this is still a series I enjoy.

The Condemned Villainess Goes Back in Time and Aims to Become the Ultimate Villain, Vol. 1

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By Bakufu Narayama and Ebisushi. Released in Japan as “Danzaisareta Akuyaku Reijō wa, Gyakkō-shite Kanpekina Akujo o Mezasu” by TO Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Alyssa Niioka. Adapted by Vida Cruz-Borja.

As I was reading this volume, I thought about the simple fact that there are too many villainess books at the moment. It’s inevitable, of course, just as there are too many isekai books (though that’s slowing down a bit), and that we briefly had too many high school romance books before that bubble quickly burst. And so I start to drill this new series down into subcategories. There’s no Japan or otome games involved, which is nice. Aside from the time travel, there’s no magic here. It’s one of those “person goes back in time” series like Tearmoon Empire, though this series is far more serious than Tearmoon. As expected, “becoming the ultimate villain” mostly involves things like trying to be a good person and avoid making the same mistakes, rather than “getting revenge” or anything. And, unfortunately, its biggest weakness is one that many other villainess books possess: there’s a “heroine” as well, and in order to balance against our clever villainess, the heroine is an amazingly annoying dipshit. Anti-Maria Campbell Syndrome.

Unlike a lot of other villainesses in this genre, Claudia Lindsey really was an annoying, petty villainess who tried to sabotage her half-sister Fermina, and is somewhat poleaxed to find that everyone hates her and she is not only not engaged to the Prince, but she’s being sent to a nunnery. Things do not improve when, on the way to the nunnery, her carriage is beset by bandits and she’s kidnapped and sold into a brothel. She spends the next few years there. maturing and realizing how shallow and selfish she had been. She also becomes a top-notch sex worker. Unfortunately, her one main ally dies from disease, and a couple of years later Claudia also passes away… and wakes up ten years earlier, in her 14-year-old body, on the day of her mother’s funeral. After realizing what’s happened, she takes advantage of “grieving” for her mother to completely redo her personalty, gain actual allies, and avoid the fate which Fermina manipulated her into last time. Because oh yes, Fermina is not a nice person, regardless of the timeline.

The strengths and weaknesses of this book are similar to other “serious” villainess books. The weakness is Fermina, who despises Claudia for having the life she feels she deserves, but without Claudia being shallow and vapid, Fermina can’t achieve anything she did in the past timeline, and is reduced to a one-note character we’re happy to see the back of at the end of the book. The strength is Claudia, who I greatly enjoyed. I liked that she is 10 years older in mind but still has room to mature, and in fact a lot of her actions are driven by her terror of Fermina somehow gaining the upper hand on her again. I also appreciate that this is a heroine who is allowed to have a libido: we don’t see her sex work, but she’s certainly more experienced in flirting than a woman of her age and noble status should be, and her growing horror as she realizes that teenage hormones means that she’s not able to put a lid on things as much as she’d like to is amusing. I also enjoyed her casual bisexuality, as she admits she finds one of the prince’s bridal candidates to be just as enticing as the prince.

The rest of the cast are good but stereotypical: the sadistic prince who loves Claudia because he can’t tell what she’s thinking; the beleaguered aide, the doting older brother, and the ludicrously loyal maid (who is her former mentor at the brothel in her former life, because nobles rescuing women from terrible fates and making them household workers is another villainess cliche). If you’re looking for something new, look elsewhere. If you’re happy with more of the same, this is quite good. It also feels like it ended with this volume, but there’s 4+ more out in Japan, so…

You Are My Regret, Vol. 1

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By Shimesaba and Ui Shigure. Released in Japan as “Kimi wa Boku no Regret” by Dash X Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andria McKnight.

As with the author’s previous series, I wasn’t going to originally be reading this at all. Mostly that’s because the author’s previous series was Higehiro, and the first volume of that annoyed me in about 8,000 different ways. The other reason is that it has a title and cover art that made me think it was another of Yen’s many “license the novel based on a new animated Japanese movie starring a young teenage couple whose love is perfect and yet also tragic”, and I’ve kind of gone off those. But then I saw it was none of those, that’s it’s a romantic drama which tries to dig into the concept of “free spirits”, being selfish about being selfless, and how middle school students are dumbasses who can’t talk to each other. Honestly, the same holds true in high school, which is why this is a romantic drama and not a comedy. Everyone is in love and it’s killing them inside.

Back in middle school, Yuzuru and Ai dated. She had confessed to him, and he loved being around her. They walked around, did couple-y things, etc. But eventually the pressure of thinking that Ai was the sort who shouldn’t be tied down to anyone and should live her life freely got to be too much for Yuzuru, and he broke up with her while badly communicating this. Shortly afterwards, her family moved away,. and he now contents himself with sitting in the literature club classroom, reading, and being completely oblivious to the feelings of angry tsundere Kaoru. Unfortunately for him, Ai has moved back and is transferring into their school. Even worse, she’s still in love with him. Can they manage to recover their relationship and figure out what went wrong in the first place?

This was a bit of a mixed bag for me. That’s actually a plus, because it means that it rises ahead of Higehiro. Unfortunately, it does that by actually taking place in high school and featuring kids the same age, meaning it doesn’t have 90% of what made Higehiro annoying. It does have the remaining 10%, which is Yuzuru, the male love interest. I want to push him into a canal. That said, I get it. He’s a high school kid. He’s also one of those “cool intellectuals” who really isn’t, and fails to understand how women think or even that they do. I really pity poor Kaoru, who not only is clearly in love with this schmuck but also has to take him by the hand and lead him to the actual clue, that clue being that when you break up with someone because you feel dating them is too selfish, you need to ask yourself what it means to be dating, AND talk to the other person. As for Ai, I am honestly not sure it’s healthy for her to BE dating him at this point, but I suppose that’s what fiction is for. She is a ball of energy and angst, and I hope we get more depth about her in the next two books (a 2nd book from her perspective would help, but I’m not expecting that.)

This is a compact three volumes in Japan, so it should resolve things fairly quickly. I wasn’t wild about it, but I’ll try another volume. Just remember that teenagers are idiots.

The Kept Man of the Princess Knight, Vol. 1

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By Toru Shirogane and Saki Mashima. Released in Japan as “Himekishi-sama no Himo” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Stephen Paul.

This book has one big, big thing going for it, which is that I finished it. More than that, I plan to read the next book. That’s a big deal, because this book is dark as fuck. It starts off really bleak, but at about the two-thirds mark I said “ah, good, it’s bleak, but it’s not 100% bleak”. NOPE. It is indeed 100% bleak, and I regretted even thinking it would be otherwise. This is a book filled with violent death, and not just of evil bad guys. The protagonist is an incredible asshole, and does things throughout the volume that are beyond the pale. The Princess Knight who is in the title is somewhat out of focus, mostly as she has to be off in the dungeons for most of the book, but she also has many issues. I have no illusions that this will have any ending other than “everyone dies, but at least they get to choose the manner of their death”. And yet… this was an award winner, and I can see why. You can’t put it down.

Matthew is the Kept Man of the title, and the Princess Knight is Arwin. Her country has been destroyed, fallen to monsters, and the only way she can save it is with a legendary treasure located at the bottom of one of the world’s only remaining dungeons. Matthew is a lecherous layabout who is as weak as a kitten but hella tough, and who, it is said by everyone, sleeps with the princess and is paid by her to do so. As the book goes on, we get to find out Matthew’s actual past, see how he goes about his day when Arwin is in the dungeon, and see him gradually get embroiled in various plots in the dark side of this town – which is, to be honest, the entire town – as he tries to hide the real reason that the princess is so dependent on him.

Translator Stephen Paul, who must have been over the moon to work on this anti-Kirito title after so much Sword Art Online, described this as being “raunchy and funny”, and I’ll agree with him on the first, but I’m not really sure where all the laughs are in this book. Matthew’s comebacks end up being more “yo mama” jokes than anything else, and the best joke in the book is one I won’t spoil, but involves some brothers. It’s definitely raunchy, though I note that the author, who knows his audience will only put up with so much in regards to their heroines, obfuscates about whether Matthew and Arwin are in fact lovers. But the main reason to read this is the sheer jaw-dropping awfulness of everything going on. Matthew’s past and present are awful, Arwin’s past and present are awful, Matthew kills about a dozen people throughout this book, and even those who try to escape the book’s world can’t make it out. It’s a compelling, nasty world.

Again, I hate reading dark stories where everyone dies, but I still finished this and want more. That’s a big selling point. That said, buyer beware.

Miss Savage Fang: The Strongest Mercenary in History Is Reincarnated As an Unstoppable Noblewoman, Vol. 1

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By Kakkaku Akashi and Kayahara. Released in Japan as “Savage Fang Ojō-sama: Shijō Saikyō no Yōhei wa Shijō Saikyō no Bōgyaku Reijō to natte Futatabime no Sekai o Musō Suru” by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Sarah Moon.

This is, for the most part, a good entry in the “reincarnated as a villainess” genre, with two big exceptions: a plotting decision at the start, and a characterization decision at the end. Other than that, it’s got a non-Japanese reincarnation, which is always nice, and a narrator who is a hell of a lot of fun. (Yen seems to have quietly dropped the “don’t let the books say fuck” guideline in the last year or two, and it’s allowed the books to sound more true to life much of the time.) I will note, though, that it’s a book that really assumes you want to see violence. The heroine used to be a mercenary who literally beat his enemies to death, and now that she’s the daughter of a duke she’s still capable of doing this, though at least holds back a bit. Mostly as she knows murder is a bad rep for a duke’s daughter to have.

The nation of Eltania is on the verge of collapse, thanks to its selfish and evil queen Mylene. We follow a group of mercenaries, led by a magicless but powerful man named Envil. Eventually Mylene is captured and is about to be executed when a foreign power shows up, using Eltania’s collapse as an excuse to invade. Envil ends up getting himself killed during this… and wakes up ten years in the past. But not in the orphanage that he first grew up in. No, he’s now in the body of Lady Mylene, already a holy terror and not yet engaged to the Prince. Now it’s up to Mylene to try to change the future as much as she can… while still, of course, making sure that she’s able to beat the crap out of absolutely anyone whenever she feels like it.

To start with a complaint, this book takes forever to get to the reincarnation. Most villainess books these days steamroll through the backstory as fast as possible to get to what readers like, which is why this one leisurely showing us that Envil is powerful and that Eltania is corrupt feels like a slog. After that things pick up, though. Mylene retains her foul mouth from her previous incarnation, at least when she’s not around other nobility, and it’s amusing to hear. She kicks eight kinds of ass. There’s a suggestion that Mylene (who has the “powers of a god”, supposedly) is fated to be greedy, and we see her, even in this new timeline, fall prey to it a bit. Best of all, though, is the scorching relationship between Mylene and Colette, the princess of the Empire that invaded Eltania in the prior timeline. I absolutely loved these two fighting and also looking like they were arguing about who gets to top. So, as you can imagine, the ending of this first volume, which has Colette essentially change to the same personality as the masochistic, worshipful prince who adores Mylene, left a sour taste in my mouth. Let two dominant women try to one-up each other, dammit.

Despite these issues, and a lot of violence/gore, this is still a good series debut. I’ll pick up the next one. Oh yes, warning, they do go to a noble academy. Did you forget what genre you were reading?

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Astrea Record, Vol. 1

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By Fujino Omori and Kakage. Released in Japan as “Astrea Record Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka?” by GA Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jake Humphrey.

Before we begin, congratulations to Jake Humphrey, who joins the ranks of the translators on the world’s most cursed light novel series. I think this may actually push the total into double digits, if we count all the various spinoffs. I’m sure everything will be fine. Probably.

In retrospect, there were many things that were a mistake about this book. First, there’s the fact that it came out a mere six weeks after the 18th volume of the main series, which had already totally exhausted me. I understand that the three volumes of Astrea Record were released monthly in Japan, and I am so glad that’s not happening here. Secondly, I need to beg publishers: please stop forcing authors to write novels based on your spinoff game. First we got KonoSuba, and now Omori is being forced to toil away at this trilogy, which is probably why 19 in the main series isn’t scheduled here yet. But third, I knew going in that this series was going to be depressing. It stars everyone in Lyu’s old Familia, which means by definition everyone is going to end up dead in it except the goddess herself and Lyu. However, good news! This book is not a longer version of the canonical deaths we know about from the main series. That is the end of the good news.

This book takes place seven years before Bell Cranel arrives in a peaceful (ish) Orario. It’s far from peaceful here. The Evils are making everyone’s lives a living hell, and it’s all the various Families can do to keep the peace. This is, of course, in addition to going down and dungeon clearing, which the guild is also making them do. Fourteen-year-old Lyu, a rookie with Astrea Familia, is overly serious and quick to anger, but seems to be fitting in pretty well… that is, until a mysterious guy shows up and starts to ask her questions like “what is justice, really?”. Which, given Lyu is an emo teen, works like a charm in terms of throwing her off her game. That said, this book is not about Lyu. It’s about the series of bloody terrorist attacks that completely destroys the fragile city populace, and all of the adventurers trying to stop literally everyone from dying.

The goal of this book is to show off how much better things are in Bell’s time, and it achieves that admirable. It’s some of the most depressing prose I’ve read in a while. Lyu has a friend, the younger sister of Shakti, who is a bubbling beacon of hope and happiness, and all I could think was “wow, you are going to get horribly murdered”. And, yup, that’s what happens. The back half of this book is an absolute orgy of slaughter. Hell, Ottar – Ottar! – is nearly killed and beaten bloody, because we have two mysterious new bad guys in town, from the now defunct Zeus and Hera Familia. The warrior is the one who takes down Ottar, and he’s a sword guy. The mage takes out both Gareth and Riveria, and she has the mysterious name “Silent Witch”. (She’s not Monica Everett, sorry, crossover fans.) They’re both doing this for mysterious reasons that I think I can guess, but I’ll leave that for next time. At least they seem to be the only two doing this for reasons that aren’t “we love killing people”.

There’s two more books of this, yikes. I will try to read the second one, but if it’s just more “let’s kill anyone likable” for 250 more pages, I may bail. For hardcore Danmachi fans only.

BLADE & BASTARD: Return of the Hrathnir

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By Kumo Kagyu and so-bin. Released in Japan as “Blade & Bastard” by Dre Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Sean McCann.

One of the frustrating things about this series is that it is obviously written for middle-aged men who grew up in the 1980s playing Wizardry and want to see the author mess around in that world. At the same time, it has the sort of set pieces that can only really be deeply enjoyed by fourteen year olds who love edgy torture scenes and constant rape threats by bad guys who are eeeeeeevil, just super, duper, ooper evil. You can tell because of the rape threats. No one is actually raped here, though it’s implied in the backstory of one character, but certainly this is a series that wants you to know that it’s not afraid to shock and offend you. Unfortunately, I wrote things like this when I was in my early twenties, so all it does is make me cringe and want to desperately be reading anything else. The core of Blade & Bastard is still interesting, it’s just the execution I don’t like.

The book starts off with a real tragedy: Garbage breaks her beloved huge-ass broadsword. She goes off to get a replacement, but none of them appeal to her, and she’s left with a “Cuisinart”, a blade that is certainly good but far too light for her, and it also spins around. (The joke is somewhat obvious.) As for Raraja, he’s watching everyone else take on the dungeon every day and still trying to find a purpose beyond “locate the girl I used to adventure with whose corpse is presumably somewhere in the dungeon”. How fortunate for him that he’s met by his old bully, Goerz, who says he has that EXACT info, and will give it to Raraja if he just does one little job in the dungeon for him. Raraja knows it’s probably a trap, but goes along with it anyway, because information and a death trap is better than no information. Sadly, he’s underestimated how evil Goerz really is.

So yeah, this is a harem series. New book, new girl, and yes, it’s the girl who Raraja has been searching for who turns out to not be dead but merely wishes she was. Orlaya has some special abilities, and thus has been used by everyone around her to the point where she’s grown extremely bitter, cynical and disillusioned, and thus 100% rejects any help Raraja might be offering. Last time I said that every girl in this series was the author’s barely disguised fetish, and that applies here, as Orlaya is missing an eye, gets stuck inside a meat machine that basically spews out monsters with her as the center, and generally defines the word “woobie”. Oh yes, and as if this weren’t cliched enough, after being saved by Raraja (duh), she walks up to the huge stacked Berkanan and says “I won’t lose!”, as if Blade & Bastard suddenly became Love Hina.

So yeah, I was mostly unhappy. That said, there are good bits here. Most of Garbage’s plotline, including a few more tasty backstory bits, is excellent. Aine gets to be a cool sword-swinging nun, even if she also gets a pile of rape threats and also loses both hands. And Iarumas almost has an emotion. Still, this book’s main audience is for those who think there’s no such thing as too much black paint.

I’m Giving the Disgraced Noble Lady I Rescued a Crash Course in Naughtiness: I’ll Spoil Her with Delicacies and Style to Make Her the Happiest Woman in the World!, Vol. 3

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By Fukada Sametarou and Sakura Miwabe. Released in Japan as “Konyaku Haki Sareta Reijō o Hirotta Ore ga, Ikenai Koto o Oshiekomu -Oishi Mono o Tabesasete Oshare o Sasete, Sekai Ichi Shiawase na Shōjo ni Produce!-” by PASH! Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Yui Kajita.

Oh dear. I’d say “and it was going so well, too”, but to be honest I had a few issues with the first two volumes of this series as well. This third one, though, feels like an episode of that game show where you send contestants into a supermarket and they have to stuff as many groceries into a cart as they can in 60 seconds. Theoretically the final volume in the series (more on that later), this volume seemingly had one plot left to deal with: Charlotte’s family and her past as an abused child. Admittedly this is a tricky plot to write when you’re doing a sweet romcom that uses the word “naughty” as its main gag, but clearly that was going to be the thrust of it. We do get that, but it’s lost in an avalanche of “everything but the kitchen sink”.

Now that Allen and Charlotte have confessed to each other, they can only get closer. Unfortunately, Charlotte casually mentions that tomorrow is her birthday… a fact that literally everyone in the cast except for Allen seems to have known, and they’re all lining up to deliver the absolute best presents, while Allen flails and is pathetic. Finally settling on “a kiss once everyone is asleep”, he then runs into another problem: Charlotte’s body holds two souls, the second one being the former Saint of her country Lydilia, who has occasionally been taking charge of Charlotte’s body (that’s how she escaped so easily), but now wants Allen to kill her as she is tired of life. (Kill her soul, I hasten to add – Charlotte would be fine.) That’s still not good enough for Allen, and now he has to find naughty things to please a completely different noble lady.

I cannot begin to describe how the first third of this annoyed me. Suddenly this non-isekai series is filled with reincarnations from Japan, who are busy creating ramen cafes. Our mail carrier catgirl turns out to have been searching for her missing twin sister… who she finds within 2 pages of her explaining this. The “perfect birthday present” section is excruciating, with Allen suddenly becoming ten times more pathetic than he’s ever been. Lydilia’s plot works best, especially when the narrative turns serious, but it also feels like it was shoehorned in so that the same “sharing souls” concept could be used to explain part of the overcomplicated solution to Charlotte’s past abuse. Lastly, the final scene with Allen and Charlotte meeting as children actively made me snarl at the book in its obviousness.

Still, at least with this last volume, we’ve… End of Part One, you say? More books coming? Sigh. If you really enjoyed this, you might try more, but this third volume just annoyed me.

The Oblivious Saint Can’t Contain Her Power: Forget My Sister! Turns Out I Was the Real Saint All Along!, Vol. 1

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By Almond and Yoshiro Ambe. Released in Japan as “Mujikaku Seijo wa Kyō mo Muishiki ni Chikara o Tare Nagasu: Imadai no Seijo wa Anede wa Naku, Imōto no Watashi Datta Mitai Desu” by Earth Star Luna. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Dawson Chen.

Sometimes a title can work against you. When I first saw this title, which (as with so many other light novel titles out these days) describes the plot, I focused on the words “oblivious” as a personality trait of the heroine, and was expecting something along the lines of Bakarina or Villainess Level 99. This is, however, definitely not that kind of book. It’s not on the level of I Swear I Won’t Bother You Again! (the gold standard of dark villainess tragedies), but this is definitely one of the more serious “disgraced noble” books, and the main obstacle through much of it is the heroine’s own self-loathing due to years and years of abuse and neglect. It ends up being… good. It’s very readable. It does, however, have quite a few problems, one of which is also directly linked to its title: this book gives away almost everything it’s going to do long before it does it.

Carolina Sanchez has had a rough life. Her mother died shortly after she was born, and her older sister has never forgiven her for this. Carolina has “good, but not great” grades, and no magic, whereas her older sister is the Saint, one with great magic potential who can heal people. Her father is remote. And now their kingdom has gotten into trouble with the far more powerful Empire, so they need to marry someone off to make amends. Marry someone off to the second prince, who ha a reputation of being a bloodthirsty psychopath. And we’re not going to marry off the very important Saint, are we? Enter Carolina, who is railroaded into this. Fortunately, this ends up being fantastic for her… well, mostly. There are multiple attempts on her life. But I mean, compared to where she started the book, it’s fantastic. It is, however, very bad for her older sister, who finds she is far, far less powerful now that her “magicless” sister is far away.

Carolina is a nice person who is dealing with having to have self-worth for the first time in her life, and I like her as a heroine. Certainly the supposedly bloodthirsty prince (who turns out to be a sweetie) falls in love with her almost instantly. That said… this book telegraphs its punches something awful. At the end of the first volume, none of the characters have figured out that the Oblivious Saint Can’t Contain Her Power, only the readers and the writer know. Which is honestly frustrating, not cool. I kept yelling “test her for magic again! Come on!” Instead we get hints, which… we know. Why are you hinting about something you literally told us in the title? (And yes, the Japanese says the same thing.) We also get told about the power struggle going on between the two princes, which is mainly because the prince who should rule is magically sick and will be dying soon. UNLESS… there’s an oblivious saint around! This is also not resolved or hinted at, but is obvious.

I enjoyed reading the characters, though again even the backstory for her guard was predictable. Recommended for those who don’t mind reading something where you know everything that happens before it does.

Nia Liston: The Merciless Maiden, Vol. 1

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By Umikaze Minamino and Kochimo. Released in Japan as “Kyōran Reijō Nia Liston: Byōjaku Reijō ni Tenseishita Kami-goroshi no Bujin no Kareinaru Musō Roku” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by okaykei.

I appreciate a book that can subvert expectations right off the bat. The cover of this book features the titular heroine sitting on a throne, with blood spilled at her feet. The subtitle is “The Merciless Maiden”. The narrative explicitly says she’ll grow up to be absolutely terrifying. And the start of the book shows us her origin: in order to save his own skin, a disreputable mage, hired to save the life of a sickly young noble girl (who has, in fact, already died), transplants the soul of a fierce warrior who lives only for battle and desires a glorious death. Throughout the start of this book you get Nia Liston casually mentioning how strong she really is. But we very, very rarely see this. This book is, until near the end, the definition of a slow burn. Instead, what we get are Nia Liston’s adventures in livestreaming. And honestly, if it were “Nia Liston: The Impassive Presenter of a TV Show”, I might not have picked it up.

After being reincarnated into Nia’s 5-year-old body, the nameless warrior (who cannot remember much of anything about their past life aside from battle lust) has to spend much of her time making it so that the body does not immediately die. Fortunately, there’s chi and cultivation and all that stuff that I am thankful we don’t go into too much detail about, and eventually Nia gets healthy again, to the delight of her parents and older brother. She then proceeds to try to learn about the world she’s living in, as subtly as possible (i.e., not very) asking her maid about who the Liston family are and what they control. The answer, for the most part, is “magivision”, which is, of course, magic television. In order to show off their daughter’s miraculous recovery, they decide to have her host a show of her own. But… will she ever get to be merciless?

Yes, it does eventually happen, though I was going to wonder if it would be subverted. Nia goes on so much at the start about how much damage she could do to people with just her pinky finger that I thought the gag would be that she was a mere 5-year-old girl in reality. But no, when she spots her co-star (she ends up acting in a teleplay near the end) being accosted by thugs, we see her gleefully getting in a bit of the old ultraviolence. Nia is not training to do anything but make her body healthier – the martial arts skills are all innate, advanced, and extremely powerful. So, of course, the main reason to get this is to see other people’s reactions to a 5-year-old girl beating up over a hundred mafia goons, which range from terrified (the goons) to intrigued (the co-star, who asks “can I watch?”), to over the moon (her maid, a former adventurer, who basically says “PLEASE TRAIN ME”).

The next volume has Nia head off to boarding school, and I assume will focus more on the fighting than the livestreaming, though I could be wrong. In any case, if you want to know how to do slow burn plotting properly, this is a good example.

Loner Life in Another World, Vol. 8

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By Shoji Goji and Saku Enomaru. Released in Japan as “Hitoribocchi no Isekai Kouryaku” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Eric Margolis. Adapted by Lorin Christie.

It feels odd to call a book that is 100 pages longer than the previous books a breather volume but that’s exactly what this is. After all of the plot going on in the last three volumes, Loner Life is returning to its roots, which means get ready for a whole lot of dungeon crawling. As always, you not only need to translate this book to English (and the translation is fine, I hasten to add – a) even Japanese fans say this is incoherent, and b) Haruka is meant to sound like this), but you also need to translate subtext into text. As such, the fact that we’ve moved from “let’s clear out all the 50-floor dungeons” and have now become “hey, all these dungeons are now about 90 floors” is a cause for great concern, and even small, supposedly random things like “Haruka is asked to make sanitary pads for the girls” delves into a critique on isekai stories in general as well as a dark examination of why Angelica and Nefertiri are only concubines. There is meat on these bones, under all that narrative bullshit.

The cover has Vice Rep B, but she’s no more prominent here than any of the other classmates not named Class Rep; the artist clearly gave her a cover shot to show off her assets, so to speak. After the civil war of the last two books, everyone is back in Omui, and there’s now a passel of orphan children with them. Most of the spare time is spent dungeon crawling, partly to get spellstones so they can afford any of the many things Haruka is making, but also partly to see what the dungeons are like after they’ve already been cleared once before. The answer is that the monsters are not QUITE as strong, but they’re still very strong, and more worryingly, the dungeons are deeper now. Haruka implies that any dungeon with 100 floors is a Very Bad Thing. Meanwhile, the rest of the class is getting stronger and stronger… but they still can’t hold a candle to Haruka, Angelica, Nefertiri or even the Slime Emperor. How can they possibly protect him?

There’s another reason Haruka’s doing all this dungeon exploration: he’s reached the limit of where he can go with just skills. Even though it’s very, very hard for him to accomplish, he’s going to have to start getting stronger and leveling up. Which means having to fight using actual COMMON SENSE, rather than fighting the chaotic Haruka way. It’s actually a bit heartwarming seeing him sparring with Angelica normally – though it leads the girls to assume, now that they can understand his moves, that they can defeat him. Hardly. Speaking of the girls, I’d mentioned the sanitary pads before (and Haruka observing that all the isekai books out there never bother to go into this sort of thing in their pre-industrial fantasy worlds), but it also brings up a melancholy subplot: Angelica and Nefertiri may look human and gorgeous now, and they’re both starting to communicate a lot better, but they’re still, at the end of the day, monsters. They don’t have periods, and they can’t get pregnant. This means that they want the girls to be Haruka’s wives while they remain his concubines… because the girls CAN get pregnant.

A somewhat sexist POV to have, but then this is a book that now uses sex like a comma (how in God’s name are the PG-rated manga and forthcoming anime going to handle this?). It remains not for everyone, but I still find nuggets of gold here. And I apologize for not mentioning the water park. Or the summer festival. Next time it looks like we start a new arc, as a (maybe?) good religious faction shows up near the end. Just… not 528 pages next time? Please?

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, Vol. 17

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By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by Lorin Christie.

We all have things we’d like to read in our favorite series. Usually they’re things that aren’t going to happen until near the end, such as a romantic couple getting together. It could also be the climax of a series of subplots that is building far too slowly and meticulously. And I have these desires about Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, only I suspect that I’m never going to get what I want. I want to meet Yuna’s parents. I want to flash back to her life in Japan before this one. I know that her parents are going to be absolutely the worst – they are, after all, the ones who, after Yuna offered them a ton of money to get out of her life, took the money and got out of her life. But they’ve still clearly affected Yuna deeply, and I think a lot of her current attitude towards almost everyone in Crimonia and other areas is due to this. It can’t all be “LOL, she’s a NEET”, after all. Parental neglect is important too.

Still in the dwarf village, Yuna decides to go watch the trials and (naturally) ends up taking the trial herself, as she accidentally arrived about 8-9 hours too early. Unfortunately for the dwarves, the trials basically are designed to match the level of the person taking them, which means Yuna’s is insanely difficult – and also mentally wearing, as she’s forced into combat situations that are poor matches for her, then forced to face herself (see the cover art), and finally forced to rescue Fina from a deathtrap, something which causes her to flip out a bit. After doing this and getting the pots and pans she came there for, she returns to Crimonia – with Lilyka, who’s basically being told to stop being tsundere and go get her man, something she finds easier said than done. The rest of the book is basically “Yuna does cute things”, at least till the end, when she’s on the floating island and sees a remote ship. Are we finally getting to fantasy Japan?

As always, the most interesting scenes in the book are the ones where Yuna is thrown off her game. Facing a version of herself is less interesting, though I was amused at her realization that it’s annoying to fight someone who does this. More interesting was the last battle. I suspected that it wasn’t the real Fina (somethng which is later confirmed), but Yuna doesn’t know that, and seeing her caught in the old “water slowly filling a tank” trap causes her to completely panic – which is, of course, the point of the trials, which remind the person taking them that remaining cool in battle is what you need to do, even if your loved ones are in danger. Yuna here basically admits she sees Fina as her younger sister, which is fine by me, as Fina’s still ten. I do wish Yuna would stop insisting she’s not gay every volume, but that’s a separate issue, and it’s not unique to this author.

If you enjoy picking through “cute bears doing overpowered things” series to find the nugget or two of depth, this sure is that.

RVing My Way into Exile with My Beloved Cat: This Villainess Is Trippin’, Vol. 1

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By Punichan and Canarinu. Released in Japan as “Akuyaku Reijō wa Camping Car de Tabi ni Deru: Aibyō to Mankitsu Suru Self Kokugai Tsuihō ” by DRE Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by sachi salehi.

Sometimes you can tell that a story is not written by a first-time writer. One of the best ways is when a story has a totally ridiculous premise (such as this one), but knows that it cannot merely coast on just that premise for the entire book. There’s some good thought given to the world building. There’s ‘level ups’, but they’re minimal, and mostly just serve to show us where things are in the vehicle. There’s bad people, but they’re just selfish idiots, not puppy-kickers. Sure enough, this author has a few (unlicensed) series under their belt, and seems to specialize in Villainess titles. That said, the villainess part is not really the reason to read this – our heroine’s exile happens in record time. No, this is for fans of Slow Life books, because our heroine loves outdoor camping, and now that she is freed from this awful otome game, she is going to CAMP SO HARD.

Mizarie Kraphtia, who has the best Obvious Villainess name since Yumiella Dolkness, is publicly shamed and has her engagement broken by her fiance the Prince within the first two paragraphs. This comes as a complete relief to her – her entire life she’s been abused for having a “dark” magic element and black hair, and even getting her family to feed her has been tough. She avoided the heroine of the game she was isekai’d into, but ended up getting railroaded into the plot regardless. So now that she has the opportunity to flee, she does so, using the secret skill she’s been hiding from everyone since she first discovered it. She summons… a camper van, which allows her to drive the hell out of the country and away from the startled Prince (who was already preparing to reduce her exile to “do all my work for me”) and finally live a real life. It’s time to start fires, cook chicken, and discover new kingdoms that won’t abuse her.

This book revels in its genre, but also revels in pointing out the flaws inherent in it. Mizarie is hated and abused for her dark magic and hair… but is still engaged to the Prince, for some reason. But as I said, the book drives away from its villainess origins at 200 MPH, preferring to dig into the nitty gritty of what it would be like to explore a fantasy world with what amounts to an all-terrain vehicle that’s also a camper van. (The title says “RV” in English and “Camping Car” in Japanese, but I call the series “Camper Van Villainess” in honor of the classic alternative band Camper Van Beethoven, author of Take the Skinheads Bowling and other light classics.) Eventually we do get to more traditional isekai tropes, like the guy left for dead by his selfish party, the adventurer’s guild handing out F-ranked missions, and a monster that prove almost too much for our heroine… at least until she uses the camper van to hit it off a cliff.

This isn’t deep, nor should it be. It’s fun, and relaxing, and its heroine is also fun and relaxing. The second volume is due out in Japan this month, so I hope we’ll see it before too long.

The Exiled Noble Rises as the Holy King: Befriending Fluffy Beasts and a Holy Maiden with My Ultimate Cheat Skill!, Vol. 1

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By Yu Okano and TAPIOCA. Released in Japan as “Tsuihō Kizoku wa Saikyō Skill “Seiō” de Henkyō kara Nariagaru: Haikyōsha ni Nintei Sareta Ore da kedo Cheat Skill de Mofumofu mo Seijo mo Nakama ni Shichaimashita” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Alex Honton.

Every once in a while I dip my toe back into the giant pool that is “light novels that don’t really sound interesting to me”, just in case I end up passing on a real winner. Sometimes I find myself completely, 100% wrong and it’s garbage. But far more often, it’s just frustrating, as the writer clearly has some ideas that might be good, or at least lead to interesting character development, but either they or the editor and publisher can never let go of “this has to be the same as every other title just like it”. I simply do not get why all these fantasy books star the same guy. He looks the same, he acts the same, he’s a “nice guy”, etc. It’s not like there aren’t great examples of light novels that succeed with far more interesting protagonists. Look at Kazuma. Or Subaru. You don’t need to have everyone be Player One.

The very first words of the book are our main character’s name, Noah Oliphage. The next words are him being exiled, just as the title says. Sounds pretty villainess-ey, yes. Noah has been found to have the Root Skill “Holy King”, and the Church – and the supposed actual Holy King – are frowning heavily on this. Noah, not wanting the church to wipe out his family, accepts exile with only a minor fuss… but ends up in the middle of the Purgatory Forest, filled with dangerous monsters. Fortunately, Noah… does NOT have awesome sword skills or powerful magic. Not good. He can form contracts with those who want his protection and who he wants to protect, though, and does so, first with a small kitten monster (that it is hinted will grow tiger sized), and then a small group of kobolds. Unfortunately, the Church wants to make sure Noah is dead, so send their biggest zealot to find and kill him.

Again, every good idea here is undercut by the need to make this book like so many other books of its kind. I was intrigued by the idea of someone getting a skill that’s basically “Jesus” but the start of the book drowns us, as usual, in stats, stats, stats. Japanese RPGs have so much to answer for. Noah is about as interesting as a sheet of white paper – actually, grey paper. The most interesting character is Aht, the aforementioned zealot. There’s a fantastic scene where we see everything about her previous few years be overwritten just by SEEING Noah and knowing he really is the messiah – it’s actually understated too, which I appreciated – but an interesting discussion about how mind-controlled she is by Noah’s contract (and, for that matter, how mind controlled she was by the Church before this) gets quietly brushed aside by her with a “I promise you it’s OK”, and she leaves at the end of the book – I suspect Book 2 will feature a different woman in the lead, this feels like that kind of series.

I may look at the 2nd volume, to see if it does anything with the concepts it’s got at the back of everything. But man, this is frontloaded with “potato-kun” fantasy stuff. He may not be isekai’d, but he might as well be. Recommended if you enjoy religious conversion or cute dogs and cats fighting monsters.