By Mizue Tani and Asako Takaboshi. Released in Japan as “Hakushaku to Yōsei” by Shueisha Cobalt Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Alexandra Owen-Burns.

Sometimes I don’t read the blurbs before I start a volume, particularly if it’s a series I’ve been reading for a while. As a result, I came into this book not knowing that it was a short story volume. This is good and bad in some ways. It allows for less complicated narratives that better show off the two leads, and can also venture into other areas, such as Lydia’s pre-Edgar life. (All but the last short story were collected elsewhere, and the prologue was the first thing the author ever wrote for the series at all.) On the down side, without a big, action-packed and terrifying narrative to drive everything, we can sometimes be reminded a bit TOO much how irritatingly smug and possessive Edgar is, and how annoyingly naive and stubborn Lydia is. Fortunately, they’re only really at their worst in one of the short stories featured in this volume. So, of course, that particular story is the one that was used for the volume’s subtitle. Sigh.

There are five short stories in this book. 1) Before the events of the main series, a Lydia who’s just starting out meets a violinist plagued by a fairy, and makes a foolish decision that will need to be fixed by the man she’s trying to save. 2) We learn how Lydia first met Kelpie, as she helps to reunite Kelpie’s bookish brother with an elderly woman who romanced him in her youth; 3) Edgar takes Lydia to the opera, and they deal with a flower girl whose daisies are telling very accurate fortunes; 4) Lydia, having just read an exciting romance novel about a couple eloping, finds a young man being troubled by a lhiannan-shee, and decides to get involved despite Edgar, accurately, saying this is incredibly shady; 5) After the events of the 6th book, we see Edgar in London and Lydia in Scotland, both lonely at Christmastime.

The first three stories are all various shades of ‘pretty good’. The fourth annoyed me the most, as Lydia is even more naive than usual, which of course requires Edgar to be more possessive than usual, and they reinforce both their worst habits, especially as Lydia is still the sort of girl who will stubbornly jump off a cliff if Edgar tells her it’s a bad idea. That said, Lydia has heroine plot armor, unbeknownst to both of them, and therefore, of course, her naive ideas of romance and eloping turn out to be correct after all. The best story in the book is the final one, especially on Edgar’s side, as it shows him trying his best to try to fall for some other girl so he can let Lydia go and not involve her in his drama and failing miserably. The climax of the story, where fairy magic brings the two of them together for a brief period,. is the most romantic this series has gotten to date.

Next time we likely should get back to the main plot. Will we get Lydia firmly admitting her feelings with no backsies? That’s less likely. Will Edgar stop flirting with every single girl in London as part of his schemes? Even less likely.

By Mizue Tani and Asako Takaboshi. Released in Japan as “Hakushaku to Yōsei” by Shueisha Cobalt Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Alexandra Owen-Burns.

I don’t want these reviews to get too similar, so let me start off with something that isn’t the tortured romance between Edgar and Lydia for a change. Perhaps the plot itself. This book really hammers home that we’re seeing a re-enactment of Shakespeare’s Richard II in Japanese light novel form here. Edgar wants to be the Blue Knight Earl. He acts like a proper English noble, which includes caring about those whose lives he governs. He’s a good person who’s trying to do what the Blue Knight Earl is supposed to do. And he gets the reward in the end. Unfortunately, Ulysses has the bloodline in his (borrowed) soul, and so all the magical guff actually works for him, whereas Edgar is left with a reward that he cannot actually see or access. The good guys do sort of win here, but it’s a bittersweet victory, comes with a death, and its only real success was getting Edgar to finally realize that “it’s OK if I die” is not a good way to live.

We open with Lydia back in Scotland, determined to separate herself from Edgar, but missing him nevertheless… and despite the multiple letters a week he writes her. However, circumstances end up reuniting them on the island where this all began, where they are dealing with a banshee who is related to the Blue Knight Earl of a hundred years ago… and has amnesia. Unfortunately, Edgar is feeling rather depressed and morose about his inability to get his feelings across to Lydia, so goes to his club, gets drunk (and, it’s implied, also smokes some questionable drugs), then goes home, and when Lydia tries to talk to him, it goes badly. (No, not like that… though he’s initially afraid it was like that.) Unfortunately, as all this is going on, Ulysses is ma,king everything worse, as usual.

Ermine continues to be interesting, though I’m not sure how long she can keep up being a double (triple?) agent without wearying the audience. The author is being pretty good about keeping us on our toes as well, but I can’t help but notice that most of the recent cliffhangers are all “Ermine does something that looks evil”. That said, after her resurrection, I don’t think the author is getting rid of her anytime soon. If only as she’s still able to completely torpedo any efforts at Lydia and Edgar to get over their hangups and talk to each other about their doubts and fears. Edgar makes his biggest declaration of lover ever this book, but it’s a drunken murmuring of Ermine’s name that Lydia takes to be his “true” feelings, partly as I think she’s scared of her own feelings for him. Certainly she’s ready to walk into a massive deathtrap for him, as well as save his life when even he doesn’t want that. But… yeah. Still not quite a couple yet.

If you love exquisitly frustrated romance and supernatural action thrillers, this remains a must read.

By Mizue Tani and Asako Takaboshi. Released in Japan as “Hakushaku to Yōsei” by Shueisha Cobalt Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Alexandra Owen-Burns.

This feels like it was inevitable. Throughout the series we’ve seen our two leads struggle with everything about their love affair, mostly the fact that it exists at all, but also Edgar’s attempts to be a better person (he keeps failing, but he’s making an attempt, and makes it far more often this book) and Lydia’s self-doubt in regards to not only everything Edgar does but also his past and her own life. Her confession halfway through the book that she worries that she’s a changeling feels a bit out of nowhere at first, but gradually the reader comes to realize that it’s informed a lot of her actions in this series. If Lydia can’t trust her own self, can’t even believe that she’s human, then there’s no way she can trust Edgar, and no amount of reassurances and reenactments of the Orpheus legend are going to change that. This leads to a cliffhanger ending that sure feels like, if this series was not a runaway success (which it was), would lead to the 7th book being the last.

Some more of Edgar’s past is catching up with him – this time a pirate crew, which includes Lotte and Pino, two young people who were with him in America. They watched him toy with Betty, another young woman in their group, who apparently turned out to be a long-lost princess, but more importantly, is also missing, and allegedly kidnapped. This also ties in with a request form one of Edgar’s holdings to look into a baby kidnapping which might be down to fairies. Edgar and Lydia, with Raven and Ermine in tow, thus head off to the village, where they find that Ulysses had not only been there before, but was much better at pretending to be the heir than Edgar is – particularly when it comes to getting the village to commit atrocities in the name of “prosperity”. Now Edgar and Lydia have to rescue Betty, defeat a giant dragon wyrm, and also somehow resolve their tortured courtship. Two of those things end up happening.

I appreciated that Ermine got more to do here, and I also appreciate that she’s still not 100% trustworthy. Leaving aside Lydia’s belief that Edgar/Ermine is the real OTP, which has more to do with her own self-image than anything else, there’s the scene with her and Kelpie, shown to the reader but very pointedly not revealed to either Edgar or Lydia. There’s something else going on with her, and I hope it doesn’t lead to her dying – again. Her own fluid identity between selkie and human, and the fact that she doesn’t see herself as anything other than human unless forced, also serves as a mirror to Lydia, whose every move in this book seems to be about resolving what she believes – that she’s a fraud, a fake, and that once she returns to the fairy world everything will be fine and happily ever after. Lotte may set off the cliffhanger in this volume, but honestly I think she did both Lydia AND Edgar a great service. These two need a break.

This was one of the stronger volumes in the series, really showing off the reasoning behind both leads being basket cases. I really want to see what happens next.