By Umikaze Minamino and Katana Canata. 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.

When I have a book where there are things I liked and things I didn’t like, I generally like to start with the bad stuff and work my way up to the good. And there’s definitely stuff I enjoyed here! But we have to address the elephant in the room, and it’s an elephant that every series starring an adorable six-year-old, past memories/abilities or no, seems to have to deal with. The author finds people creeping on Nia hilarious, and assumes the reader does as well. We’ve already had the first two volumes, where her maid is constantly trying to get into her bed. Here we get Reliared’s older sister (yes, another one) wants to paint Nia in the nude (she’s an artist, but it’s also framed deliberately as “this is a skeezy creep”. And the king essentially saying “you will be mine once you’re old enough.” It’s designed for a very specific light novel audience that isn’t me, and I hate it. Anyway, onward.

It’s summer vacation for Nia, but of course that means ENDLESS FILMING FOR MAGIVISION. Once that’s over with, fortunately, she can visit Reliared and her lovely family (and creepy sister), and then head off to the princess’ private royal island… which also has the king, who is also vacationing, and turns out to be not quite as royal as you’d like… or is that just a facade? As for those of you who follow Nia to see her punch things, well, here’s not as much as the previous two books, but she does discover a new dungeon. And what’s more, she assigns her protege (and maid) Lynokis to go out adventuring and hone her new techniques. And earn money. A lot, a WHOLE lot, of money. Which Nia will need in order to realize the next part of her grand plan.

The best part of this book, aside from the ending, showing Reliared for once winning against Nia, if only indirectly, is her discussion with the King. Aside from his creeper tendencies (again, see the rest of the book), he turns out to be one smart cookie. Indeed, he’s much smarter than Nia, who presents an idea of having an annual fighting tournament but can’t think of more than two reasons why it would benefit the kingdom. The king thinks of eight other reasons, tells her how mind-numbingly expensive it would be to do properly, and sets her a goal of two years to raise that ludicrous amount of money. In just two pages he shifts the entire goal of this book from “let’s watch Nia race puppies” to “let’s watch Nia finance a shonen manga”, and I think it’s a good pivot. More of smart king, less of lecherous king.

So yes, a big asterisk next to this title. Assuming you can get past it (and it’s always used for humor, not seriously), this is a good entry in the “overpowered elementary school girls beat up the world” genre.