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.

This series does have, amidst its themes of “war is hell” and the like, a love triangle at its core. This is part of the series’ annoying sub-theme of “all the aides are in love with their commanders” that I dislike, but I’ll ignore that for the moment. Claudia is easiest to understand, she’s a classic tsundere who’s in love with Ashton but refuses to admit it to herself or others. Ashton is in love with Olivia, though it’s not clear if it’s romantic or just a shining ideal, but he is otherwise a classic romcom harem lead, with a few “could these women actually like me?… naaaah” monologues under his belt. And then there’s Olivia, who loves Ashton and Claudia, but I suspect the author is not intending us to be thinking “yay, polyamory”, but rather that we’re supposed to think that Olivia is not quite human and doesn’t understand romantic or sexual attraction. It’s a bit of a mess.

The start of the book features Olivia and company headed to the Holy Land of Mekia, there to meet up with its leader, who has taken a shine to Olivia. They try to lure her to their side with promises of using their resources to find out where Z is, which makes Claudia curse, as this had never even occurred to her to try to offer Olivia, and Fermest can’t do it very well as they’re at war. Still, an incident involving Ashton’s near-death… again… convinces Olivia that she’s not going to change sides for now. In the meantime, the empire continues to have a very bad time, which is what happens when your grand vizier… pardon me, chancellor… is evil and your empire is secretly run by a death god. When the Kingdom comes calling, with Olivia at its vanguard, who will rise up to meet her? And will it be enough?

We get a nice little flashback in this book to Olivia’s parents (though she was originally called Caroline) and are reminded that her mother is of Deep Folk descent, which is leading to a lot of subplots converging. Still, she may have human/deep folk as birth parents but her upbringing is all Z, and that’s what really makes her as inhuman as she seems at times in the series. She has no real fear of monsters that would kill anybody else, and when asked where she grew up, points to the middle of a forest that has a reputation so bad that anyone who tries to investigate it finds their investigators dead. That said… Olivia is also gradually getting more humanity in her, and that’s entirely due to Ashton and Claudia, who are definitely a calming, soothing influence on her, even if they can’t actually stop her from doing what she wants. This series is not going to end with polyamory, but if it *did*, it would be great.

It might also end with most of the cast dead, admittedly. After all, war is hell.

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.

Getting back to a niggle I had last time, I will grant the fourth volume of the series this: the adjutant in the battle here does not appear to be in love with her commanding officer. That said, we do get a lot of similar beats, where the younger adjutant is told to retreat so that the older commander can die protecting the retreat. I admit that I am very fond of just how many women are in this book, and of course it stars Olivia, who is a monster in human form. All the same, I’m seeing similar things happening over and over in this series, and would not mind a female adjutant who stays behind and dies so that her commander can get away. You know, as a change of pace. I’m also not all that happy with the running gag of the women in love with the oblivious men, even as I will reluctantly admit that’s truth in literature.

Olivia’s success is having repercussions. First with her and her close companions – she’s made a major general, and given an army of her own to command, with Claudia and Ashton by her side. She gets to attend royal balls, where she interacts with the King, and also meets emissaries of foreign nations, like the Not At All Suspicious (TM) Sofitia. But in addition, her mere existence has caused the Empire to try to find other ways to win, such as proxy wars that they force an allied nation to take up for them (it goes badly). And Fernest is also having to deal with invasions of its own, though it’s helped there by the commander and the ruler in charge of the invading state both being very, very stupid. Don’t poke at Olivia to see what she does, you won’t like it.

There’s a lot of plot stuff going on here, to be honest, but Olivia’s actions seem to flow around it. Apart from trying to find out where Z has gone off to, she really has zero interest in all of the political machinations happening around her. She’s aware it exists, and does tell her aides that she is aware that Sofitia is probably inviting her to Mekia for nefarious reasons. But she’s never, ever had any fight cause her trouble since she last saw Z, and that doesn’t change here. Her reputation is starting to be less “oh no, that’s not possibly true” to “OH MY GOD IT’S HER”, and she’s definitely going to be facing stronger opponents, but I’ve yet to see anyone who can really take her on. Which might be for the best. No one is reading this book to see Olivia struggle and have self-doubts. She can delegate that to Claudia, probably.

This is a good “military strategy” series, provided you aren’t turned off by Olivia’s glorious OPness throughout. Frankly, that’s why I read it.

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 have to feel bad for the normal soldiers in this book, whose job it appears to be to get massacred, either by the antagonists or by Olivia, who is technically the protagonist but whose body count is mind-numbing. We see an entire fortress of Crimson Knights slaughtered, not as part of a military ex4ercize or in a political maneuver, but merely to show off how dangerous and powerful the new group of bad guys are. Hell, we even get a “you have a wife and twin daughters, and another on the way” comment to the guy in charge, though honestly by the time he was brutally murdered I’d forgotten about his family, who we’re never going to meet. Only the strong survive in this series, and the definition of strong gets higher all the time. The possible exception to this is Ashton, but it’s his strategy that’s monstrous in this case, so he’s entitled to have the other monsters guard him.

Olivia, Ashton and Claudia have finally gotten permission to research the name Olivia took on as her own, and why its origins and downfall are essentially missing. Sadly, they don’t have much time to do this before they’re ordered to go help the 2nd Legion, who are in a desperate battle where even having a crafty and clever commander is not helping them. Fortunately, Ashton has a plan. Also fortunately, after the war gets worse and worse, the 1st Legion finally gets the OK to leave guarding the king and go into battle – and, for once, they actually show off why they’re the first legion, as their commander is the bigger fish in the “there’s always a bigger fish” anecdote. Now that the day has been saved once again, there’s only one question remaining: how big a cake can the royal palace make for Olivia?

First of all, I would like to beg the author: please have just one “male commander and female adjutant” pairing where she’s not obviously in love with him, I beg you. Though obviously this does not apply to the rather unbalanced triangle between Olivia, Claudia and Ashton, that’s still hilarious. Secondly, most of this book is meant to show us that there’s a third side to this war, they’re the equivalent of “the Church”, and they tend towards the evil, as most Church groups do in fantasy books like this one. I was pleased to see that the Church’s resident lothario makes absolutely no headway with either of our female leads – Claudia because she can see through his bullshit, and Olivia because normal human behavior is not a thing she does. That said, the bigger danger shows up at the end of the book, and I suspect it may be that which Olivia deals with in the next volume.

Aside from the three leads, this is not a series where I recommend getting too attached to anyone in the cast. But if you don’t mind some darkness, this is a fun ride with a very odd heroine.