Archive for the Light Novel Category


My First Love’s Kiss, Volume 1

September 25th, 2024

On a rocky shore, two girls in Japanese school uniforms with dark skirts and white sailor-style uniform tops stand. One, with long dark hair, is a distance away. Closer to us is a blonde who looks over right shoulder at us.

by Eleanor Walker, Staff Writer

Content warning: Underage sex work is a prominent theme of this book, although nothing is explicitly described. There is also violence.

My First Love’s Kiss is the newest English release from Hitoma Iruma, who authored the Saeki Sayaka novel spinoff of Bloom into You, and Adachi and Shimamura. Illustrations are by fly, whose work has also appeared in Chasing After Aoi Koshiba, and various yuri anthologies.

My first introduction to Iruma-sensei’s work was reading the Saeki Sayaka spinoff novels of Bloom Into You, and having subsequently read most of Adachi and Shimamura, and now the first volume of this series, I have come to the conclusion that his works are much more enjoyable when he’s writing about someone else’s characters instead of his own.

The author’s own afterword says that this is planned to be a 3 volume series, and this volume almost reads like a prequel, setting up the characters and story but without much actually happening. Some research while writing this review indicates that this series is set in the same universe as Adachi and Shimamura and stars Shimamura’s former senpai. Hino and Nagafuji also appear as supporting characters. However, I had no idea about this going into the book, and the cover just says “From the author of Adachi and Shimamura” with no indication that the two series are linked. Perhaps it’s because the Adachi and Shimamura novel series is released in English by Seven Seas, whereas this is a Yen On release, but I feel that’s some important context which is missing.

As for the story itself, I’m not really sure what’s going on here. The first chapter is told from Takasora’s point of view. She and her mother live in a small apartment, and the novel opens up with “surprise, here’s my friend and her daughter, they’re going to be living with us for a while” Understandably, Takasora is not too impressed with having to share her already small bedroom with this new interloper and losing her only private space. At first they agree to ignore each other, but Takasora wonders where her new roommate is going late at night.

The second chapter is told from Takasora’s new roommate, Umi’s, point of view. Umi and her mother have clearly not had an easy life, couchsurfing is all she knows, and she finds herself involved with an older woman, Chiki, who is willing to pay her for companionship. Much of this chapter is a flashback telling the story of Chiki and Umi so far.

The third and final chapter alternates points of view, and Takasora confronts Umi about what she’s doing at night. Encouraged by Umi’s mother, for some unknown reason, Takasora follows Umi to see what she’s getting up to and overhears her confessing her love to Chiki and her wish to start dating without money involved, which they do. Maybe I’m just missing something, but I don’t understand how Takasora has gone from barely tolerating Umi at the beginning to now having an unrequited crush on her by the end of the book.

Ratings:

Art – 6. I enjoy Fly’s art style but the illustrations in this book are very samey. Even the cover illustration is repeated twice in the colour page section at the beginning of the book.
Story – 5. All setup, no substance. Hopefully it’ll improve in the next volume.
Characters – 5. Especially without knowing the link to Adachi and Shimamura, I found the characters rather flat.
Service – I don’t feel comfortable rating underage sex work as service.
Yuri – 4 . There are women/girls in relationships.

Overall – 5 . I’ll probably finish the series if it’s only 3 volumes, but I’m glad it was on offer when I bought it on a whim in the shop.





The Executioner and Her Way of Life, Vol. 8: Fall Down

August 16th, 2024

A woman in "nun" costume with short silver hair and a woman in shorts, and a split singlet of blue, edged in yellow, with long pale hair tied into pigtails with a black bow, respectively sit and crouch on the roof of a building.We left our intrepid adventurers at the doors to the ominously named City of Ruins after a Volume 7 that began new interior journeys for our new principals. How does Volume 8 hold up?

The Executioner and Her Way of Life, Vol. 8: Fall Down is a pretty good story!

When I say “pretty good,” I am of course speaking the relative scale of this series. It is not Gideon the Ninth, but after 7 novels where the beginnings are slow and plodding, the climaxes are – in many cases – predictable and sometimes anti-climactic, and the descriptions focused on elements better left imagined, this book was a good read.

The volume starts in the middle of an action scene, and continues more or less full-throttle through a final action scene that was actually quite good. As these scenes unfold, we also learn that the playing field in the background is shifting quite a bit, which set up a Volume 9 that I sincerely hope will be the climax this series needs.

In the meantime, having shelved one of the two main characters, this volume actually shows us a Menou who acts as though she is the protagonist of an epic story. As she learns pieces of her worlds’ lore, she now understands who and what she is. It necessitates hard choices, but those too, have made her grow as an individual. Speaking of growing as individuals, the former nun Sahara gets more than a moment to shine here. Having decided to serve the left pinky finger of Pandemonium, Maya, Sahara is developing a conscience. It annoys the shit out of her, but she too, is becoming a hero. In turn that has given Maya a whole new outlook and this Human Error is reclaiming her humanity.

Even the illustrations remembered to illustrate the characters as they are described in the scene. nilitsu’s art is getting better, although not up to showing Menou as the kind of “stunningly gorgeous” she keeps being described as. I went on  short rant on Bluesky about that. I recommend not hiring moe artists to illustrate your characters, when the description reads “drop-dead gorgeous.” It really kicks me out of a story.

Ratings:

Art – 7 Menou is still not stunning and her shorts are the wrong color in every illustration, which is very confusing to me – why? Why not give her black shorts as described?
Story – 8, seriously
Characters – Gawd, I think they might even be a 9
Service – Action and less guro than usual which I consider a service!
Yuri – Even less, as Akari fades from the story, for now.

Overall – 8

I hate to be that guy, but honestly, this series gets good at Volume 8. If you can learn from context and exposition, I suggest you simply skip the first six of these, read Volume 7 and then jump into Volume 8, for a pretty good action novel. Thanks very much to Yen Press for the review copy!





The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady, Volume 7

July 26th, 2024

A young woman in a pink dress, and red cape, her blonde hair tied on both sides with ribbons faces us, her palm outstretched, other arm akimbo. Behind her, a silver-haired girl in blue, a yellow bow in her hair, holds one fist up to her chin. A palace can be seen in the distant background above a city.So, you’re a Princess with memories of another world where “magic” tools existed, an obsessive interest in research on magic that is opposed by a lot of the nobles and the academia of your country and you’re always getting in trouble for pursuing that research, and your brother does something so gob-smackingly stupid that the country will have to turn to you for leadership, only you fall in love with your brother’s ex-fiancee and she with you and in the course of remaking the monarchy, you become a dragon and she becomes an immortal spirit. And the two of you do remake the monarchy with her as Queen and you as her consort, and save the country, reconcile with the nobility and academics and your brother and gather around you a team that includes a vampire, and humans from all the classes….

…where do you go from here?

This is the question that is front and center of The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady, Volume 7.

In most fairy tales, “happily-ever-after” marks the end of the story. So what if the princess (and prince and country) suffered trauma and loss to get to the wedding? So what if the prince had been a frog or the princess a swan, they get on with their lives. I’ve long looked for stories that stop and take a sober look at the after happily-ever-after. I love epilogues for that reason and sequels that take place 10 years later.  So what did the Heroes of the Revolution do when they got home? They could hardly pretend to be ordinary people anymore.

Piero Karasu has, to my immense joy, actually taken up the mantle of what happens next and presents a grander tale than I could have imagined. As ruling Queen, Euphylia has a vision…for Anisphia…to make their country a center of magicology research. But the capital is simply not the appropriate place to create this. So she conceives of a plan so grand it will require a new city, with Anisphia as it’s architect.

Anis, having embraced her inhumanity, now has to dig deep back into it to learn how to lead the people she has gathered around her.

Sure this series has its fill of dragons and vampires and werewolves, of magic swords and flying cars, but it is centered around the idea of answering the question, “what if someone wanted all those magic things to matter?” And when those someones are two women who are deeply in love, who have sacrificed their human lives to make their country a better place, they do matter.

Don’t think for one second that this is a profound book, though. This volume is full of small, human conversations, about dreams and hopes and fears, about a shared vision for a better future and the understandably selfish desire Anis and Euphie have to just stay together and ignore the world.  It’s not brilliantly written, but the love Anis and Euphie have for one another is explicitly stated – I believe this may be the first time they say they love each other openly – and their vision for their country is, well, vast. There’ll be plenty of room for them to grow into it and more stories to tell.

Ratings:

Art – I just cannot with this art. It needs to be epic and they look 6.
Story – 8
Characters – 9
Service – Rather less than any previous volume
Yuri – 10

Overall – 8

Do I want to read a series about two magical women building a city of magical research? Hell yes, I do.





I’m in Love with the Villainess: She’s so Cheeky for a Commoner, Volume 2

July 8th, 2024

A girl with long blonde hair with a red bow and a girl with medium-length brown hair with a baby water slime on her shoulder walk under a parasol,. Both wear red school uniforms jackets and blue skirts. In Volume 1, we once again find ourselves in Bauer’s Royal Academy, where one Rae Taylor upends the school and eventually the entire country in her pursuit of  Claire François. Only this time, we’re seeing it all from Claire’s perspective. That first volume added a ton of new content to the story including a character that was influential, but never seen in the initial series.

In I’m in Love with the Villainess: She’s so Cheeky for a Commoner, Volume 2 of the spin-off light novel series, we once again see things from perspectives other than Rae’s. Claire, Misha’s… even Pepi and Loretta’s,  Claire’s close friends and hench chicks, turn out to have a story all their own. It turns out that their story is – and will continue to be very worth reading. I find I never reviewed it when I read the Japanese edition, d’oh. It was my favorite of the three volumes. How annoying.

I refuse to spoil the why, so you will have to trust me on this. ^_^

In the meantime, this volume does something I find fascinating. By taking two side characters and putting then in the limelight, we’re forced to rethink their motives and actions completely. And this leads to my absolutely favorite scene in the entire series. One I liked so much, I referenced it in my interview with inori-sensei for Yuricon 2023. It is in this novel we truly come to understand Pepi Barlier and her bosom friend, Loretta Kugret. When they follow Claire to Rae and Misha’s hometown of Euclid, their lives change forever. I promise that their story does not just end there, either. Despite the fact that the Revolution arc basically shelves them, here more will happen that will include them…and it will have repercussions.

Once again this book forced me to confront my weakness at stories about the twins, Mei and Aleah. Any time spent with their trauma will always hit me hard. I’ve said that this book is worth reading if you liked the original I’m In Love With The Villainess light novels. I stand by that. It is not mere a “other person’s perspective,” it is a reminder that one person cannot know everything, no matter how much knowledge she has. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Service – 3? 4?
Yuri/LGBTQ+ – We see their relationship from Claire’s side

Overall – 9

 Volume 3, the final volume of the series, (until/unless inori-sensei completes her sequel) will hit our bookshelves in October.

Volume 1 is already available as an audiobook, and Volume 2 is headed our way in that format in August.





The Executioner And Her Way Of Life, Volume 7: Lost

June 24th, 2024

A blonde girl with long hair tied up in a black ribbon bow, tugs on the collar of yellow over her blue dress, black crop top and white pants.In Volume 6 of Mato Sato’s isekai fantasy light novel series, the promised battle occurs and it ends and there are no apparent consequences at all. Which was only a little surprising, given this series penchant for adding new plot devices, world-building elements and characters freely as a form of adornment, rather than support.

It was, therefore very surprising to begin The Executioner And Her Way Of Life, Volume 7: Lost to learn that in the last 6 months story-wise, a great deal has happened. Instead of showing us, the author decides to tell us, leaving us not so much reading a novel as reading the very comprehensive guide to a novel. Every character is a paragraph of description, followed by their abilities and eventually, some small nugget of their history that might be relevant to the scene, to be added to as the next scene happens, and the next as if we are having this book told to us by a DM rather than a novelist.

I ain’t mad though, because given how many new characters are added and how much has occurred since the last novel, actually having to read the multitudes of scenes would get in the way of the few interesting things that actually happen in this book.

Sahara has not been a particularly fascinating character…until this novel. She’s clearly meant as mediocre foil to Menou’s status in the story. When we catch up with her here, this failed priestess with a magical prosthetic arm is wallowing in her mediocrity, and ennui. As the story develops, she finds that she has little choice but to grow and become a better person – and it annoys the daylights out of her.

What makes this evolution especially noteworthy is that the person she is protecting is someone we (I, definitely) had kept forgetting to care about.

In a series with a lot of throwaway characters, Maya, the little finger of a Human Error, was particularly forgettable, except as a reminder that this writer really likes to torture young girls – something I am not okay being reminded of. Maya’s redemption arc is extraordinary. That it pulls Sahara, and in some ways even Menou herself, along with it, is even more notable.

What worked best in this volume here was the almost complete removal of characters we have focused on in previous volumes. Menou herself is a side character in this novel, but what she chooses to do hints that 1) maybe the author finally has a plan and 2) she might be developing a personality. Both are welcome additions to this narrative.  We find ourselves with something that looks like in the future it might become a resolution, after we fight the next big bad on the way to the biggest baddest. With accompanying grossnesses for grotesquery’s sake. Thankfully, Mato Sato is about as interested in writing the grotesque as I am in reading it, so those scenes tend to be in that guidebook format, rather than lingering.

You may be asking why I continue to read this series. Trust me, I have asked myself that, as well, but, in this series – which is literally a tale of many ways in which humans lose their humanity – the addition of simple kindnesses and connection between people was something that genuinely made this volume worth reading.

Ratings:

Art – 6 Irrelevant as usual. One cannot keep telling us these characters are gorgeous then give us this art.
Story – Begins at 5, but ends at a strong 7
Characters – 8
Service – Light guro
Yuri – Less than usual, and somehow more poignant as a result of it all being so offscreen.

Overall – 7.5

It comes down to the fact that I quite like the construction of the magic and the world-building and kind of want to see where it leads?  I mean, will Menou (or /the person she was originally/) ever reunite with Akari? I dunno. I don’t even know if Mato Sato knows. But I guess we’ll have to find out one day, right? ^_^