By Touya and chibi. Released in Japan as “Tensei Sita Daiseijyo ha, Seijyo Dearuko Towohitakakusu” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Kevin Ishizaka. Adapted by Michelle McGuinness.

Sometimes I enjoy a good bit even if it’s obvious. Indeed, sometimes I love it because it’s obvious. And Secret Saint is, let’s face it, a series that runs on comedy, tragic backstories aside. So I have to inform you that I was smiling gleefully all through the main plot of this series, which was a perfect combination of Fia being intuitive and clever based partly on her instinct and partly on her past knowledge, and Fia being a complete dimbulb who has no idea how the world of 300 years later works and doesn’t bother to find out. There’s also an extended scene between the captains which basically serves as an excuse for Desmond to scream for 65 pages or so at the top of his lungs. That said, by the end of the book I had noticed that, despite having supposedly been the start of a brand new arc to move the story forward, not a hell of a lot happened and there were side stories galore.

Fia returns from her extended vacation to find that all the other new knights have met with the King, which is something that happens with all the first-year knights. Fia, having been absent, now has to have her turn. The king, Laurence Nav, looks about as you’d expect. What is perhaps unexpected is that he has THREE court jesters, all of whom take the opportunity to pour scorn on and belittle Fia. Ah ha! This must be one of those tests! It is indeed, and as you’d expect Fia breaks it wide open. After this, the captains all have a meeting to discuss the strange and terrifying events of the last few books – all of which deal with Fia. And then Fia is asked to meet with the current Great Saint, who is supposed to be marrying the king. That should go well. After all, Fia is a knight, not a saint.

So, apologies for giving away the obvious gimmick of this book, one of the jesters is the real king, and the other two are his closest advisors. Fia figures this out due to a combination of 300-year-old knowledge and her magical saint powers, but it’s the way she carries it off that makes this so fun to read. She’s forced to play a poker game that’s really an excuse for the king to wave his secret identity in front of the knights’ faces without giving it away, so is rather upset when Fia, in fact, figures it out and wins in her own way. I really enjoy this sort of Fia, and hope we see more of her in the next book, which I suspect may get a bit Villainess-ey. I admit I’m not as fond of Fia not realizing that her powerful dragon familiar disguising himself as a chibi-version does not really count as a disguise, or once again not understanding that things are very, very different 300 years later. But you can’t have one without the other, really.

I’m not sure when we’ll get Book 8, but I won’t have to wait long to read more about Fia. Or rather, about Serafina. Tales of the Secret Saint’s getting a prequel series, and it’s out soon. Till then, this was fun.

By Touya and chibi. Released in Japan as “Tensei Sita Daiseijyo ha, Seijyo Dearuko Towohitakakusu” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Kevin Ishizaka. Adapted by Matthew Birkenhauer.

This is not the first time I’ve seen this happening, but I am noticing that, having established the fact that Serafina was raped for weeks before she was murdered in the past, and that this is really the main source of the PTSD she still suffers, the novels are doing their best to dial that back so that they don’t have to make the reader think of it again. It’s become a sort of general demon trauma, but it’s also become specifically “that one guy”, who we (but not Fia) already know is not the “demon lord’s right hand man” at all. The front half of this book actually deals with that trauma, giving us an actual demon, and is quite good. Unfortunately, I think we have hot a new record, as the main part of the book ends just before the halfway point. We now have more side stories than regular plot.

Fia is still on vacation with Green, Blue, and Kurtis, and, since it came up when she returned to her childhood home, she goes into greater detail with them about her fear of demons. And it’s just in time, as while they’re up on the mountain they happen to run into a young woman with black hair and black eyes, who is clearly a demon but enjoys toying with them, calling herself a poor defenseless human. Unfortunately, she *is* a demon, “The Bird Cryer”, and much as they’d like to tell a panicked Fia to stay back and let them handle it, she’s more than the three others can handle. Fortunately, this is not the one demon Fia is traumatized by, so she’s able to pitch in. The rest of the book is, well, Fia being Fia. Which let’s be fair, might be why people are reading this book more than folks who are here for the plot.

So yeah, Fia is a giant silly person, who doesn’t get that she is obvious and unsubtle and super powerful. She hands out potions that can restore someone’s health from a coma without thinking about it. She hands Blue and Green (and yes, despite them giving it away several times, she still doesn’t know they’re royalty) a curse-destroying hairband for their sister, not thinking anything of it that she’s basically given her peace of mind and stopped the trauma. She gets her commanding officer one of the most powerful griffons in the land. Accidentally. She rediscovers magical hearing restoration potions as she didn’t realize that in the 300 years since she made them, they became unknown. If she put her mind to it, she could easily take over the world. Everyone but her knows this. Fortunately, she is 100% avoiding this. She’s just a knight, after all!

I really wish we had more main story and less side stories, but this remains funny and cute.

By Touya and chibi. Released in Japan as “Tensei Sita Daiseijyo ha, Seijyo Dearuko Towohitakakusu” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Kevin Ishizaka. Adapted by Matthew Birkenhauer.

I have to be honest, I should not enjoy this series as much as I do. It really does a lot of things wrong. At its core is broad humor involving a heroine who misunderstands almost everything everyone says to her, and that’s fine. In fact, it’s almost a genre in itself. And she’s really, really good at not getting it. But it also manages to bring up her very real PTSD that comes from her actual death and everything leading up to her death, to the point where she’s actively repressing the worst memories of it. This is also quite well written and handled with care, but the two plotlines really should not co-exist next to each other as well as they do. In addition, this volume once again is 2/3 of an actual book, followed by endless extra side stories that either tell other character’s POV of what Fia narrated for us, or Fia’s wacky adventures as Serafina in the past. Where we find she was also a giant ditz.

After the events of the previous two books, Fia is now officially a knight, but before she can get down to the business of protecting the royal family, she’s given some time off. She uses this to go north to visit her older sister, aka the one sibling that did not treat her like hot garbage growing up, and also check in with Zavilia, who is no longer a tiny little dragon familiar but has become King of the Mountain – literally. He even has his own dragon cult, though there’s some implication that this is mostly due to pure terrifying force of will. Unfortunately, when she gets back to her home, she’s also met by Guy Osbern, who used to “tease” her as a kid by calling himself a legendary demon. Sadly, he had no real way of knowing the very real trauma that she had in the past from demons, and seeing him again brings it all back.

Again, for the most part this is hilarious. Before she sets off on her journey she runs into “Green” and “Blue”, the royals from the neighboring kingdom who are still just random adventurers to her, and she takes them with her on her journey. Literally everyone except Fia can see they’re Very Important People, but she does not care. She also has a nice dose of accidentally using her saint powers and having to pretend that it’s for some random reason, though fortunately she doesn’t have to restore any severed arms here. Amidst all this, we do get actual plot, if only a bit. The past history of the kingdoms does not quite match up with Fia’s memory of her past from 300 years ago, and Kurtis knows why but does not want to upset Mia too much. What’s more, it turns out that they may not have defeated the real demon lord – and “the demon lord’s underling” is the one part of Fia’s memories that she’s still running away from in terror.

So: this is hilarious You will laugh. But there’s an odd current of deep tragedy also rolling through it, and the resulting taste should not work but does.