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.

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 review, by necessity, features major spoilers for this volume, and I recommend not reading it till you finish it. I will put the cover (which does not spoil) first to allow you to avoid the spoiler.

Earl and Fairy’s first volume was clearly written as a one-shot. Most series are. Not everything is created to be a massive hit without having to actually sell the books first. And sometimes authors look back at decisions they made in the first book, when they were not expecting it to be, say, a 33-volume behemoth, and think “man, why did I do that plot twist? It worked great for a single book, but I could have done so much more with the character?” Mizue Tani was clearly thinking exactly that when she was writing up the plot of this volume, which features… well, come on, you have to guess what I’m talking about given I’m discussing major plot twists from the first book. She’s back, there’s a supernatural explanation, and it’s cool.

Edgar has been attending a seance held by a suspicious medium (one who seems to recognize him) that is meant to help a mourning woman marry off her late daughter’s ghost. Oddly, someone else is also attending the seance pretending to be him… and creating nasty rumors in the tabloids, rumors that Lydia (who doesn’t trust Edgar more than she can throw him) immediately believes. She’s also annoyed that she has to pretend to be engaged to him for reasons we saw in the last book. Then she’s promptly kidnapped (again, it’s that sot of series) and when Edgar and Raven track her down, she seems to genuinely be possessed by the spirit of the woman’s dead daughter. Well, possibly her daughter. And also only possessed half the time. Is this another of Ulysses’ clever plots?

So yeah, Ermine’s back. Arguably this ruins the tragedy of her death in the first volume, but frankly I always found her death in the first volume rather annoying, so I don’t really mind this all too much. She’s now a selkie, as apparently this is how she was saved from death in the first place. Unfortunately, having betrayed Edgar and Raven in Book 1, she’s got to do it again, this time because Ulysses has her “skin”, in the form of a glass bead, which if destroyed will kill selkies for real. We’ll see how long she lasts this time around before what I suspect will be a slightly better death. As for Lydia and Edgar, he is at least starting to get why she doesn’t trust him in the least – he has to stop treating her like a solution to his problems. That said, I think most of the readers are siding with him more than her right now – we do want a romance novel, after all.

I greatly enjoy the writing in this series, because (I have observed) it’s nothing like modern light novels. Anyone looking for something different, come get this.

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.

If you’re looking at that subtitle and thinking to yourself “Oh good, we’re going to move past the shoujo “bad boyfriend but so hot” tropes and have them get together, I have some very bad news for you. This series is 3 volumes into a 33-volume run (in Japan, I’m not expecting miracles from JN-C), and the closest you’re going to get in this volume is Lydia saying she will “think about” falling in love with Edgar. And honestly, it would be far too fast right now, given where the characters are. This is an old series that came out back in the day when you could greenlight something long, so the development is slow and languorous. Edgar is still trying to figure out where to prioritize getting revenge for everything that’s happened to him and what he feels for Lydia. Lydia, meanwhile, cannot fathom ANYONE being interested in her, and still regards everything Edgar says as false. Which is not 100% true – but is not quite a lie either.

Edgar and Lydia’s back and forth, will-they-won’t-they is soon joined by a new inhabitant of Edgar’s house: Paul, an artist who Edgar has decided to give a bit of patronage to. They seem to have a past history, which is very interesting given Edgar’s past. Indeed, Paul is not even sure if this is the same boy, given that the last he’d heard the boy and his entire family were all dead. There’s also a fairy with a moonstone ring, trying to get Edgar to accept it so that he can be married to the Queen of the Fairies. Unfortunately, the ring has been stolen by a kelpie, who has known Lydia a long time and wants to use the ring to have HER return with him to Fairyland forever. As for Lydia, she mostly just wishes everyone would go away and let her get on with her work.

The frustration is the point, of course. At many points in this volume you want to strangle both Edgar and Lydia. Crucially, it’s rarely at the same time. Edgar ends up coming across much better when he stops pressing so hard, but he simply can’t find it in hiself to keep that up, and when he presses too hard he comes across as a bit scary. Lydia is already a girl who rarely dealt with real humans as a kid, and the one party she went to had the classic “boy who likes her pretends he asked her as a joke because it’s too embarrassing” plotline, and it’s twisted her entire viewpoint of herself. (The red hair doesn’t help – remember, redheads are still abused in this period.) But when push comes to shove, they will both sacrifice themselves to save the other, and that’s what really matters.

I don’t think it will take 30 more volumes to get a confession, but I suspect we’ll have the status quo for a bit. If you like old-school shoujo with good worldbuilding, this is perfect.