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.

At least I can respect its consistency, as the 2nd volume of Secret Saint has exactly the same flaws as the first volume did. It can be a lot of silly fun, especially when Fia is forced to be the straight ma in the group despite the fact that she is an airhead 100% of the time. This even holds true, mostly, for the fighting scenes when our heroes are battling the most deadly monsters they’ve ever seen before and Fia reacts the same way you would if you spotted a blue tit in your bird book. On the other hand, it does mean that when we get to the more serious stuff involving the pasts of both Fia and Zavilia, it feels out of place. It’s written well, don’t get me wrong, but out of place. Also not helping things is that this book is technically only 130 pages – the other 80 or so are side stories, interludes and bonus stories, meaning we don’t get much of the main plot.

After the events of the first book, it’s clear that Quentin, at least, has figured out who Fia’s tamed familiar really is. Unfortunately, that makes him into goofy airhead #2, as when he’s talking about powerful monsters he gets obsessive and over the top. The knights are going to set out on a mission to try to drive out the black dragon that is presumed to be in the forest and send it back to its lair, thus solving the “why are so many monsters hovering around here lately?” problem. There are two issues with this plan: 1) the reason the powerful monsters are coming around is they’re drawn to Fia; and b) the powerful black dragon is in fact the familiar that she’s putting bows on to make it look cuter. Still, I’m sure nothing will go wrong, even if it means forcing all the soldiers to deny everything they just saw.

While they feel awkwardly out of place, I will admit that the more serious parts of the story are also the most memorable. Zavilia’s past is the Ugly Duckling gone horribly wrong, and its moral is basically “people are assholes even if they’re dragons”. Far more impactful is Zackary, the most sensible of the captains, trying to get Fia to confess who she really is. She almost does, and feels like she can trust him, but when she starts to do so she has a complete panic attack. This is quite well handled, and Zackary does a good job of helping her recover and backing off, but it’s clear that the trauma of her past life is not remotely something she has gotten over, and therefore allies are going to need to either rely on good faith or assume that the world has turned weird.

I’d argue that if you’re looking for fun overpowered dimwitted swordswomen, Reborn to Master the Blade is probably a better choice. This is still pretty good, thogh, I do hope volume 3 gives us a bit less “let’s pad out the book with other people’s POV”.

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.

It has to be said, I have a type. They don’t necessarily have to be the heroine (though they certainly are here), but if you get a really strong woman, usually holding a sword, who’s also kind and brave and cheerful… and a bit dumb? Let me tell you, that is my meat and potatoes. So as you can imagine, I was delighted to find that Secret saint offered me a full-course mean of ditzy strong girl. Now, this doesn’t mean the book is excellent. Like a lot of light novels of this sort, if you try to examine the actual plot it ends up having a lot of holes to poke through. But if you don’t, you get the story of a young girl who, near death, ends up getting memories of her past life as a powerful Saint, and her attempts to secretly use that power to help herself while also keeping it a secret from everyone else. Except… she’s terrible at this.

Fia, the youngest daughter in a family of knights, has not had a very good life so far. She’s trying to follow in her siblings’ footsteps, but despite training constantly, she’s not a great knight. Her father ignores her, her brothers disparage her. Then when she goes on her coming-of-age ceremony, she ends up accidentally healing a monster… who then tears a big hole in her. She then remembers her past as a Saint… and now knows how far Saints have fallen in the last three hundred years. Fortunately, with the knowledge from her past, she not only passes her ceremony with flying colors, but also ends up as a knight guarding the royal family! With her ability to make extra strength healing potions, keen instinct for both monsters and humans, and complete lack of common sense, can she keep everyone from knowing who she is now?

As noted above, the fun part of the book is Fia’s increasingly hilarious attempt to pretend that everything she’s doing is perfectly normal and not suspicious at all. No one really buys it… but she never QUITE lies, and they aren’t really able to read her enough to get a bead on her. Her personality made me happy. That said… first of all, her backstory, both as Fia and in her past life, seems far too brutal for a light, fluffy story like this one. “I can put up with an abusive knight captain because it’s nowhere near the abuse I got from my brothers” is not a good punchline, and it occasionally jars. There’s also the fact that the narrative is not good at telling us how much of this is Fia herself and how much is Fia’s past memories. The implication is that her observational talents and sudden tactical genius is all because of her past, but you could also argue that it merely unlocked something in her all along. It’s confusing and I wish it was delineated better.

But honestly, if you don’t think too hard about it, this is a winner. Fans of My Next Life As a Villainess who wonder what Katarina in an RPG would be like can read this and see: she’s be much the same.