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.

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.

Once again, as I read this series I am reminded just how far shoujo has come in the last twenty years, and how different it is. Everything going on between Edgar and Lydia in this series is intensely familiar to anyone who read the popular titles of the day back then… and yet it already feels like it’s from a hundred years ago, with Lydia’s inability to think anything but the worst of Edgar and his own inability to show Lydia what his love actually means feeling more frustrating than romantic. There’s also the “Lydia is kidnapped every volume, and threatened every volume, or both” problem. There’s consent issues. That said, once more, if you read this as a supernatural thriller and try to ignore the romance, there’s gold to be found here. Every volume brings a new creature that I have to google and find fascinating, and this one is no exception. We’re also getting a lot more contextualization about Edgar’s goals… and what he will and won’t do to get them.

Lydia is, unfortunately, at a society tea party, where she is forced to deal with a lot of hot gossip, most of it about Edgar, who now is rumored to have an entire harem of women. Of course, Lydia almost immediately believes this – if there’s one thing we know about Victorian England, it’s that rumors are true unless proven false. And, of course, Edgar *does* appear to be going to what is very carefully not described in this book as an opium den, but, well, is an opium den. He seems to be visiting a mysterious woman who lurks in a corner of the room… and he’s not the only one, as a marquess is also very interested in the same woman. What does this have to do with a paired diamond, black and white, which is mysteriously connected to Edgar’s family? And will Edgar and Lydia ever truly understand each other?

Edgar’s enemy in this, of course, is “The Prince”, and is trying to prove a closer heritage to being the future King of England than the current residents on the throne. Victoria is never mentioned here, nor is “Bertie”, the Prince of Wales at the time of this series (which seems to be set in a vague “somewhere between 1837-1901” time), but the general attitude of the bad guys is basically that they are, perhaps, not quite as British as one would like in a monarch. Perhaps a bit too Saxon. That said, I doubt we’re really going for any critique of the English monarchy here, but instead the series is using the time period as an obvious place where a large number of people would still believe in the fairies that are Lydia’s bread and butter, and who litter this series,. on both sides. Again, it’s all about the thriller.

The 6th book in the series is not scheduled yet, so there may be a bit of a break next. Perhaps it will allow Lydia to realize that not everything she hears about Edgar is true, and for Edgar to realize that confessing his love doesn’t amount to much if he has no future to offer her.