By Yoshiki Tanaka. Released in Japan as “Ginga Eiyū Densetsu” by Tokuma Shoten. Released in North America by Haikasoru. Translated by Tyren Grillo.

Well, I did ask for more politics, and we get it here, though there’s not really a lot of political backroom dealing. Instead, what we get is Reinhard sitting back, letting everyone else hang themselves, and then strolling in and taking everything over. I’m still not quite sure we’re supposed to like Reinhard or not, and certainly his casual lack of empathy as he sacrifices people for his own ends can be chilling, but there’s no doubt that at the end of the day he can make the decisions that lead to the Empire gaining power, whereas Yang Wen-Li is never going to be that person (much to Yang’s own relief, I suspect). It can be a bit uncomfortable to read – “what if the Space Nazis were the best option?” is essentially where were’ going with this current plot – but it’s certainly fascinating.

Yang in particular is not having a very good book. He’s back at his Death Star, but the fight that comes to him is just a diversion, and he knows it. Moreover, Julian has been transferred away from him , and though Yank knows that right now it’s the best thing to do, particularly as he needs someone he can trust on Phezzan, it’s not doing wonders for his psyche. Julian is not only the son he never had, but also his minder, and Yang is now required to do things like wake himself up. The horror! Sadly, while Yang can figure out exactly what’s going to happen, he can’t do much to stop it – indeed, the first third or so of the book doesn’t even have him in it. Julian does get to be awesome when he gets to Phezzan, but it’s preventing further damage control more than anything else.

Speaking of Phezzan, the trouble with trying to play both sides against each other in a never-ending war while you sit back and make money off of it is that sooner or later you may get called out by one of the sides. The scenes where The kidnapping of the emperor occur are probably the most amusing in the book, as Reinhard solves almost all his problems by literally doing nothing, allowing the resistance to escape with the World’s Brattiest Emperor, a 7-year-old child with no impulse control and a tendency to bite. This of course gives Reinhard a good excuse to send every ship he has to attack the Alliance, and install an 8-month-old girl on the throne as the new emperor. Even his enemies are sitting back and staring at how much everything just comes together for Reinhard here.

You may notice we have a new translator, though I didn’t see any appreciable difference in quality. A lot of the time Legend of Galactic Heroes is written like a musty old history textbook, and that comes across very well here, though it may annoy some people not used to this sort of narrative. Legend of Galactic Heroes is never going to be a series that inspires obsessive love, but it is noble and staid, and wears its empire building on its sleeve. We’ll see how the chips fall next time. And will Reinhard and Yang ever meet face to face?

Oh yes, and Rupert dies, probably because he’s in a Wagnerian novel series and his name is Rupert.

By Yoshiki Tanaka. Released in Japan as “Ginga Eiyū Densetsu” by Tokuma Shoten. Released in North America by Haikasoru. Translated by Daniel Huddleston.

When we last checked in with this epic space opera, I was saying that this book would show us which direction the series was going to go, and I’m not sure that ended up being the case. Don’t get me wrong, this is an excellent book, with great battles and character examination, but at the end of 300-odd pages I am left with the feeling that not much has changed since we started. Except there are a lot more soldiers dead. Because above all else, Legend of the Galactic Heroes wants to tell us about the folly of war, specifically war for the sake of war. And it does this quite well, whether it be via Yang Wen-li having a long inner monologue about what history has taught us about the military or an evacuation order leading to the deaths of hundreds as panicking soldiers kill other panicking soldiers in their efforts to flee a doomed Death Star.

Of course, it’s not called a Death Star in the book, but a giant circular battle station that functions as a planetoid for its inhabitants is going to make one think of Star Wars, especially as Japan released this volume in 1984, when that sort of thing was at its height. The plot that kicks off this volume is an ambitious technical general coming up with the idea of building a 2nd Death Star, warping it into position, and then fighting it out with Iserlohn, the old one currently occupied by Yang and his Republic forces. It’s an all-or-nothing plan, and normally Siegfried would be around to try to talk Reinhard into being more sensible. But Siegfried is dead, and while Reinhard is trying to do his best to imagine what the young man would recommend to him (we see this later when he spares the life of another young general), he’s still not very good at it, and spends most of the book unemotionally doing his job and closing himself off from most human contact.

Reinhard and Yang are usually compared and contrasted, and Yang also spends a good deal of this book cut off from his allies. Not by his own design, though, as the Republic have called him in for “a court of inquiry”, which is different from a court martial in that they don’t have to tell anyone or have any actual charges. In point of fact, they imprison Yang for weeks because they just don’t like him, and it drives everyone to distraction – especially the people back on Iserlohn, who are now forced to fight for over a month against the enemy without their tactical genius. The book does especially well in paralleling the Empire and Republic, Reinhard and Yang this time around. They both have corrupt glory hounds, they both assume that people who hold respect and are held in high regard will want absolute power (after all, it’s what they would do). And they both have beautiful young secretaries who have designs on them, though Yang is a little ahead here – he and Frederica are more like awkward teenagers, whereas Hildegarde is having difficulty getting Reinhard to even admit emotion exists after Siegfried’s death.

This was great fun to read, but again, after the whole book we’re mostly in the same place we were. We do learn a lot more about Phezzan, though, which has designs in trying to eliminate one side and prop the other up – as puppets for their economic tyranny. Oh yes, and there’s still the Church. I suspect the next book will have a lot more politics to it. And we get a next book, as Haikasoru have picked up the next three in the series. Great news.

By Yoshiki Tanaka. Released in Japan as “Ginga Eiyū Densetsu” by Tokuma Shoten. Released in North America by Haikasoru. Translated by Daniel Huddleston.

In the first volume, we saw the Galactic Empire and the Free republic spend most of the book at war with each other. This time around, they spend most of the book at war with themselves. Reinhard is not the best at making friends and influencing people, and so the aristocracy decide to take him out in a coup. Meanwhile, knowing that he needs the republic to be distracted while this is going on, Reinhard plants a traitor in order to start a coup on the republic side, which will keep Yang Wen-Li busy doing what he hates the most – fighting military battles. By the end of the book, both Yang and Reinhard have suffered grievous losses, though you could argue that Yang’s is merely sad, while Reinhard’s amounts to a grand tragedy of epic proportions.

This series has a huge cast, to be frank, bordering on the ridiculous. I will not blame the reader from getting completely lost among the Empire’s admirals, not knowing their Wittenfelds from their Mecklingers. That said, I never felt lost, mostly because, with the exceptions of the obvious main characters, the book is more about the plot than the characters. And it still has its obvious agenda – war is a tragic, horrible thing that devastates everyone. As with the first book, neither side comes off very well. The Empire is filled with arrogant scheming aristocrats who regard ‘the people’ as their toys, and indeed most of the latter half of the book hinges on such a jaw-droppingly heinous incident that I am reluctant to spoil further. As for the Republic, we see the dangers of the military assuming that they know what’s best for the people – sure, there’s martial law and no freedom of speech now, but freedom will return. really. Any day now.

If LOGH has a huge cast, it also has a reputation for killing that cast off. The aforementioned heinous incident leads directly to the most astonishing one, but (again trying not to spoil) its main purpose is also to show us that Reinhard is still stunningly immature at times, and can react just the way the aristocrats that he’s trying to put down do. I think the nest volume will be very important in seeing whether he manages to mature as a leader, or if he’s going to be the villain of the series. (The author is being very even-handed about both sides being tremendously flawed, though I suspect most Western readers will automatically side with Yang Wen-Li.) Speaking of Yang, he’s forced to admit at the end of the book that the republic’s own leader is a dangerous tyrant – and Yang feels a great desire to do something about it, something that goes against his very nature.

Having introduced most of the backstory in book 1, the second book does not feel quite as much like a history lesson. The translation can still get pompous and didactic, but again, I’m fairly sure the original was exactly like that as well. And the space battles are described well enough that even those uninterested in such things will be drawn in. I suspect the third volume will be a giant signpost as to where the rest of the series is heading – I highly look forward to it.