By Syuu and Muni. Released in Japan as “Soup no Mori: Doubutsu to Kaiwa Suru Olivia to Moto Youhei Arthur no Monogatari” by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Jordan Taylor.
It’s always annoying when I read an afterword and the author essentially says everything I’m going to say. So yes, the first book in this series was about taking a broken young woman and helping her to open up to one man, leading to their marriage. This second book has as its goal getting her to interact with a much larger world, and also realizing that, while her powers may make some people scared and/or dismissive or her, this isn’t always the case, and that her powers can do good things. To be honest, she ends up saving a lot of lives here. Clearly she probably SHOULD be a royal apothecary, as she has the skills, and also can talk to the animals like Doctor Doolittle. There is just one slight problem – Olivia doesn’t want to do this. She wants to live in the forest with her husband, sister (more on that later) and many, many animals and hand out soup. Sorry, kid, you’re a light novel protagonist.
This book alternates between slice-of-life stories of Olivia puttering around her restaurant with Arthur, doing things like making health potions or healing a wounded rabbit, and the larger overall plot of Olivia’s world becoming much larger. This is mostly due to the arrival of Lara, a runaway teenager who was the daughter of a noble father and his maid, and now that the father and her mother have died the stepmother has made her life miserable. She ends up becoming the younger sister that Olivia never had, and is basically part of the story to add sometime bright and upbeat to a series that is still mostly about two sweet yet default morose individuals. She’s also studying to be an apothecary, something that Olivia is already qualified for… and she even gets a letter saying she is the equivalent of a royal apothecary. Which is good, as this is a dangerous world.
As I said above, if Book 1 is “Olivia gradually learns to care about things other than the animal world”, this one definitely shows the interactions between the animal world and the human world, and Olivia and her powers are a huge part of that. Olivia ends up getting more than one “What’s that, girl? Timmy? Trapped? Down in Dead Rock Canyon?” moment here, though the animals can literally speak to her, so it just makes things easier. Which is good, as this book is filled with deadly plagues, near-fatal road accidents, and driven insane with grief drunkards, and Olivia comes to the rescue each time. The last one is particularly hilarious, as we meet a steward who clearly despises Olivia, and think to ourselves, “Oh man, I hope he’s secretly evil”. And good news! This was the one plot that didn’t quite work for me, as it felt the most manufactured and had the most bullshit use of Olivia’s powers. But I’m not really going to criticize such a relaxed series like this for going too OP.
The webnovel of this series indicates there’s a third book, but it’s not out from the publisher yet. I wonder if it will continue trying to drag Olivia into larger and larger political spheres and away from her insular life. I can see an argument either way.
