By Natsu Hyuuga and Touko Shino. Released in Japan as “Kusuriya no Hitorigoto” by Hero Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Kevin Steinbach.

It’s very tempting to just type “Holy crap!” and leave the review at that, but I will try to go into more detail. This is the final book in the Western Capital arc (yes, we are back home by the end of the book, woo hoo), and it fires off all the guns it has been saving up since the 9th volume, with the last two-thirds or so being a very tense ride in which (sorry to spoil you a little, but this shouldn’t surprise you too much) Maomao is caught up in events and gets sort of kidnapped. She and Jinshi are apart, again, almost the entire book, but end it closer than ever before, with words not said but actions taken that will make the reader cheer. That said, what made *me* cheer was Chue. I’ve loved her since she was first introduced, even as I realized that she was clearly more than she seemed, and here’s where we find everything out and also worry that the author is going to kill her off. It’s a dangerous book.

At the end of the last book we saw the assassination of Gyoku-ou, and unsurprisingly we now have a succession crisis. The first son wants to give up his rights, the second son is against that, and the third son… is a very strange and deferential young man. Meanwhile, Maomao also meets the little grand-kids of the family: Gyokujun, a spoiled brat who serves as the annoying young boy you love to hate the entire book, and Xiaohong, a far-too-mature for her age girl who Maomao previously helped get over eating her own hair. As Maomao tries to sort out this tangled web of relationships, and also treat the occasional terrible nausea and horrible headaches, the first son is shot with a poison arrow. And the fallout of this puts Maomao far, far from the Western Capitol and in more danger than ever before.

I’ll be honest, I frequently have trouble with series that have huge casts with similar names, most of whom are some relation to each other, so a lot of the time I was trying to act like Maomao and just smile and nod. This isn’t even getting into the political situation, the fact that we’re still trying to save the capital from a famine, and even more bandits who somehow manage to be even worse than the first bandits, and one of the antagonists trying to immolate themselves. But come on, let’s talk about Miss Chue. After Maomao, she’s probably become my second favorite character in the series, even passing Shisui. And here we get her inevitable tragic backstory, and also frankly we almost get her tragic end. Possibly the most heartbreaking moment in the book is when Chue says “do I have no value anymore?” to her mentor (who I’ll leave a surprise). Fortunately, the answer appears to be “yes, you do still”, though Chue is probably going to have to find new ways to pull flags out of her sleeves in the future.

All this and Lahan’s brother too. Poor Lahan’s brother. Sometimes I can still hear his voice. In any case, this series remains amazing.

By Natsu Hyuuga and Touko Shino. Released in Japan as “Kusuriya no Hitorigoto” by Hero Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Kevin Steinbach.

Every once in a while on television you get a season where a character doesn’t appear for a while, or only appears on a couch, because the actress is pregnant or the actor has broken a leg. Or in Doctor Who, you get “Doctor-lite” episodes where he’s busy filming something else, so you write something where he’s absent most of the time. Obviously a book does not need to do that, but you might be forgiven for thinking that this volume had to have Maomao and Jinshi be fairly sedentary for a while, and not involved in the action all that much. Instead, the entire climax to the book is one of the big payoffs we’ve been waiting for, but Maomao is completely absent from it. In her place, we get confirmation about a character”s true agenda (which we all guessed), and get another character’s tragic backstory, which turns out to be very, very relevant.

We’re still dealing with the aftermath of the grasshopper invasion, not helped by the occasional aftershock of grasshoppers passing through. They’re low on food, low on fuel, and low on medicines. Maomao is helping to make “not quite as good” medicine with the next best thing, while also taking the time to save the life of a little girl who finds that hair and persimmons don’t mix. That said, the Western Capital is doing it’s best,. and it’s all thanks to… no, not Jinshi. Well, yes, Jinshi, however, someone else is taking all the credit, and that someone is Gyoku-ou, who has an agenda, and it involves the rumors that he thinks he has completely figured out about Jinshi’s parentage and a fierce desire to go to war with another country. Can he be stopped from dragging Jinshi into a war he doesn’t want any part of? And what does coal have to do with all of this?

Having worried you all, fear not, Maomao is in the majority of this volume. She’s separated from Jinshi most of the time, which means he spends much of the book in a bad mood. This is not helped by the fact that Chue squealed to Jinshi about the fact that Rikuson asked if Maomao would marry him last volume. This leads to some amusing scenes of Jinshi being jealous and angry and Maomao mostly being annoyed, but as it turns out there’s a very good reason behind what both of those characters did. They know who the important people are in the Western Capital, and the most important is not Gyoku-ou. That said, I wished he’d be a good antagonist, and he absolutely is that, coming across as clever, brutal, and with grand ambitions that sadly are a bit beyond his means. He’s also deeply tied up with the backstory we’ve been chasing about the Yi Clan, and I’d love to talk about that, but it really is a good spoiler.

All this plus a brief cameo from Yao and En’en, and even more Chue. Still one of the top light novel series coming out over here.

By Natsu Hyuuga and Touko Shino. Released in Japan as “Kusuriya no Hitorigoto” by Hero Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Kevin Steinbach.

It’s a very odd feeling reading this volume at the same time as the anime is adapting the second one. The setting of the first eight books (OK, minus Book 5) is entirely absent, as we’re still doing Maomao and Jinshi’s Excellent Adventure. This is not to say that there is not political wheeling and dealing – in fact, the climax of this volume depends on that fact. But this book is ten volumes in, and we’re not concerned with the ways of courtesans and court ladies anymore, but with potatoes, crops and insects. It would be the perfect book for a certain insect-loving court lady to make her triumphant return, but alas (Maomao does think of her, at least). And while we do get a bit of Maomao’s standard detective schtick, for the most part this book is a race against time against an all-powerful enemy… one that arrives near the end of the book and wipes out nearly everything. This is what Jinshi and Maomao have spent a while trying to avoid.

We’re still out in the West, where Maomao, Tianyu, and the quack doctor are theoretically there to maintain the Moon Prince’s health (because, lest we forget, he gave himself a horrific wound to show off the depth of his love), but in reality they’re there to try to figure out how to stop the impending famine. Arriving at a local village (and joined by Lahan’s older brother, who, since the quack doctor got a name in the last volume, becomes the new running gag), they find that the villagers don’t really care about the crops that much, as whether they’re good or bad the Governor will subsidize them. (Does this sound familiar?) There is one old man who is doing all the right things… because of a tragic backstory, of course. A tragic backstory that becomes very important as Maomao and company realize that the Biblical plague of locusts is coming towards them NOW.

The book is excellent, with a fantastic climax, and a nice twist showing that for all his supposed status Jinshi can still be used by others who are better at dirty politics. But you’ll pardon me if I talk about the romance in this one. For the most part, the romances in this series tend to be either “toxic but also the main draw” (Maomao/Jinshi), or are established couples. But we did see a hint of something purer in Book 6, which sadly could not really develop because Book 6 was a giant nightmare for them. Yes, Lishu is back, and she’s raising ducks in the West. And taking to them like… well, like a duck to water. Frankly, she looks far happier here than she ever was as a Consort. Her reunion with Basen, though it does not lead to an actual commitment (she claims to still be too weak for that, and she has a point), is so sugary it will give you diabetes, but that actually tastes really good next to the toxicity that is Maomao and her Moon Prince.

That said, the character I really want to see after this book is Gyoku-ou, who is being set up to be the next big antagonist. Cannot wait for Book 11.

Oh yes, and Chue is still practically perfect in every way. But you knew that, of course.