By Maito Ayamine and Cierra. Released in Japan as “Shinigami ni Sodaterareta Shoujo wa Shikkoku no Tsurugi wo Mune ni Idaku” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Sylvia Gallagher.

I’ll be discussing the final pages of the book, but only under the picture, so be warned.

Before we get around to how this series seems to love to lead me around by the nose, we need to, I suppose, address the fact that this is definitely the second part of Book 7, not a book in itself. I probably should have saved the two books and read them as one. If only as this is 95% fights, and I just don’t have it in me to talk about those. Wow, those undead really are hard to kill. Oh man, the goofy scientist is mortally wounded (and then never seen again). The large cast means that we have a lot of viewpoints to flit between, but I’m going to be honest, I don’t care about most of these people. I like them well enough, and wish them well. But in the end, I’m here for Olivia, Ashton, Claudia, and maybe Felix. If pressed.

Felix and his knights, along with the sleeping emperor, have defected to Olivia’s side in hopes that she can do something about the emperor (easy) and the man currently causing the undead to overrun the entire country (difficult). Fortunately, while they may not have Ashton anymore, they do have that old librarian from previous books, who also turns out to be a strategist, and she comes up with a plan: Fernest, Mekia, and Sutherland all join forces and offer a deal: one big battle against Darmes’ undead army, and if they lose they’ll surrender. Olivia knows he’ll take the deal, but that will also give her and Felix the opportunity to run straight for the castle to take out both Darmes and Xenia, the evil God supporting him. That said… they still have to fight scores of undead. No getting around that.

Even given the fact that it’s the second part of a 550-page book, this book is still badly paced, and needed an epilogue that was longer than the 4 pages or so it gets. I was starting to get a bit suspicious of the ending around 3/4 of the way through the book, when we see Claudia and company fighting valiantly but NOT dying tragically. If this book was going to keep going the way it had been, we needed a lot more death, and no, that one woman from Mekia doesn’t really count. Then at the end, when Olivia wins (yeah, sorry to spoil, but you guessed that) and she is told she can get one wish that’s anything she wants, I knew where it was going. So yeah, I was wrong. AGAIN. And it’s fine, I’m OK with it. I’d be a lot more OK with it if the epilogue was 20 pages rather than 4, and showed ANY of the other characters in the book. Which, um, guess that means I did care about people other than Olivia, Ashton and Claudia.

I think I’ve now run out of “military battle fantasy” series that I’m following, and this certainly was one. It’s worth reading for Olivia’s eccentric, striking personality, but also in seeing how much she grows and changes, particularly in the last two books after Ashton’s death. And she has only more room to grow.

By Maito Ayamine and Cierra. Released in Japan as “Shinigami ni Sodaterareta Shoujo wa Shikkoku no Tsurugi wo Mune ni Idaku” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Sylvia Gallagher.

Always lovely when I have to eat my words. You may remember at the end of the last review I did, where I said that Ashton’s death likely wasn’t permanent, as this was not that kind of series. Well. Um. Guess it is now? I feel a bit guilty, given I recently dropped a series (The Mythical Hero’s Otherworld Chronicles) for getting too dark and cynical, but in this volume Death’s Daughter also doubles down on the dark. The good news is that it’s not nearly as cynical, and gives us some hope that the series will not end with everyone slaughtered (the flashforwards to how various dead commanders will be remembered helps). the bad news is that Ashton’s death does not seem to be the sort that can be undone by magical means, and also lots of other regulars die here as well. The very bad news is that the author couldn’t cram all the plot into this book, so the 2nd part of Vol. 7 is still to come.

The final battle between the Asvelt Empire and the Kingdom of Fernest ends up being completely upended by the arrival of ghouls controlled by the new emperor, who is not remotely evil at all, of course. This has always been a “war is bad” series, but the ghouls also help to remind you that even though war is bad, there are still ways that it should be fought, and these corpses do not do any of that. This is also bad news for the United City States of Sutherland, who get a “become my vassals or be destroyed” message from the empire, with one of the states serving as an example of what will happen. Even the Holy Land of Mekia can’t deal with this, and the Seraph finds that the ghouls are not a product of mage tactics. As for Fernest, well, let’s just say a lot of the cast who’ve been around since Book 1 gets one last battle. And, um… where’s Olivia, anyway?

The reason I spoil that Ashton is found dead in this volume is that it happens right at the start of this book. We then spend almost the ENTIRE book waiting for Claudia and Olivia to find out about it. We don’t even see Claudia till 4/5 of the way through the novel, and Olivia, after a brief scene showing her happily training with Z, is also absent for the bulk of it. There’s two reasons for this. First, I get the sense that if Olivia and Claudia were actually present throughout this volume, there’s no way that the series couldn’t avoid killing them off too, which would make the end a bit bleaker than I think even the author wants. The other reason is, of course, to show their devastated reactions at the book’s climax, because otherwise this would feel a bit too much like “the book was just cut in half arbitrarily”. The counterattack needs to start next time, even if the romantic resolution isn’t going to happen anymore.

So what’s next? There’s certainly a lot more cast we can kill off, but I suspect the last book will have a bit less of that. Till then, oof. This was a punch to the gut.

By Maito Ayamine and Cierra. Released in Japan as “Shinigami ni Sodaterareta Shoujo wa Shikkoku no Tsurugi wo Mune ni Idaku” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Sylvia Gallagher.

Generally speaking, if you’re trying not to spoil yourself when reading a light novel, there are several things you need to do. Avoiding covers is almost impossible, but you can certainly avoid the color inserts, which tend to spoil. Don’t read the author’s afterword till you’ve finished the book, of course, as it often asks readers what they thought of the plot twist. And, of course, try not to read the table of contents, because chapter titles frequently spoil. And so (spoiling here, sorry), when I saw that the last chapter before the epilogue in this book was called “The Girl Defeated”, I knew what was going to happen. It wasn’t a big surprise, the series ends with the next book, so there had to be SOME point where Olivia loses a fight, just so she’s not all-powerful. That said, I was surprised anyway. The Girl Defeated is an accurate chapter title, but the chapter itself ends very happily. It’s the Epilogue that kills you.

We’re finally at the big battle between Olivia and Felix… well, OK, there are a few other big battles before that that don’t involve our heroes, but honestly, most of them feel like they’re padding out the book, and resolving a romance by having a superior officer say “hey, clueless guy, get married to the girl who has an obvious crush on you” is possibly the most pathetic thing I’ve seen in this series. The important bit, though, is that Olivia’s army is finally losing badly, mostly as the other side are simply better, more experienced soldiers. So she decides to gamble it all on a one-on-one fight with Felix, sending Ashton back to base and taking Claudia and a few others to forge a path to Felix. Their battle is cool, well-balanced, and a fair fight. Alas, this world is currently being taken over by an evil Dark God, and he interrupts things to gloat at Felix and generally be evil.

I have grown used to the fact that this series is very good at writing instant gratification, with scenes that work well as you read them but fall apart the moment you try to think more deeply about the subject. This is not a bad thing – popcorn entertainment is perfectly valid. But it can be hard to review. I did appreciate that (spoilers again, sorry) after spending the entire series searching for him, Olivia is finally reunited with Z right as she’s about to die – I get the sense that he wanted to let her grow at her own pace till he had to intervene. The whole “now I will teach you the ultimate final move” ending is pure shonen, but honestly it’s a delight seeing Olivia’s face as she’s finally reunited with her “father”. Less delightful is that pesky epilogue – I don’t expect a permanent death, as this series is not that dark despite its title, but it certainly ends the book on a sour note.

So great stuff, provided you don’t look too deeply, and provided you let your eyes glaze over whenever a male captain and his female adjutant have a conversation with each other. Tune in next time for the final book.