Reign of the Seven Spellblades, Vol. 15

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By Bokuto Uno and Miyuki Ruria. Released in Japan as “Nanatsu no Maken ga Shihai suru” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

Reign of the Seven Spellblades is one of those rare light novel series that has, if not a huge fan wiki, at least a relatively up to date wiki, which is very useful when you have dramatic tragic deaths and you cannot actually remember who these people are. At one point I paused, looked up a name, went “ah, right, from Book 8!”, and moved on. That said, this is the final volume of the big Kimberly invasion arc, and we’re fifteen books is, so the author is finally killing off, permanently, actual people who have been around a long while and who we care about. I’ll get into the details of that a bit below, so spoiler warning. But I also need to emphasize that, even though this is a book filled with war, death and grieving, it never quite hits despair, and the overall theme is triumph, even if it’s at a painful cost. This book is optimistic. Well, as optimistic that a book about a boy killing off all the faculty can be.

Summarizing this is hard, as it’s mostly 250 pages of fight goes one way, then the other way. Bad guys die tragically. A few good guys die tragically. A lot of people we’ve never heard of die tragically. We also do find out why the bad guys are doing this, or at least why they’re saying they are. And we get some flashbacks that remind me that, much as I’m enjoying our main cast working their way through magic college, all their parents did the same thing a generation before, and they were all equally eccentric/bonkers. (The book is mostly serious, but the funniest bit has the students asking Katie if she’s all right and then having to clarify they mean “not possessed or consumed, we know you’re completely bananas”). In the end, the school is saved… just barely.

So, first of all, none of the six main characters die. (I have to be careful not to say “main six” because I know one day I’ll mistype it and this will become My Little Pony.) Katie, aside from the comedy bit I mention above, is entirely absent. Chela is mostly there to be support, the author clearly didn’t have anything for her to do. Nanao too is mostly absent aside from the very end. But if you like Oliver, Pete, and Guy you’re gonna be happy. Certainly happier than they are. Rita Appleton has been around since the 4th book and her crush on Guy has been around almost as long, and she gets to do what a lot of teenage girls with a crush would fantasize about, die to save her beloved. Richard Andrews has been around since the very start, the definition of the “arrogant rival guy turned reluctant ally turned reliable ally”, and it’s that reliability, as well as compassion, that leads to him saving Oliver, Nanao and Chela. Now a few characters I was sure would die somehow did not (there is more than one teacher given a backstory that is literally “I want to die”, and yet…), but this victory came at a cost. Still, it was damn cool as a fictional story.

Next time I assume we will be back to Oliver’s vengeance… whenever next time is. The 15th book came out in Japan over a year ago, and the series is now caught up. We wait for the author, and remember the fallen.

Agents of the Four Seasons, Vol. 7

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By Kana Akatsuki and Suoh. Released in Japan as “Shunka Shūtō Daikōsha” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Sergio Avila.

My friend Erica Friedman has talked before about an annoying characteristic of many light novels, manga and anime, which is the “emotional torment of children for plot purposes”. It’s relatively easy to win over the reader by doing this, and lets the main characters being abused be sympathetic – you really want them to have a nice blanket and a hot cup of cocoa. But as the author said in the afterword to Book 6, that is just not happening in Agents of the Four Seasons. These kids (and we’re introduced to more kids in this new book, all of whom are in some way, shape, or form broken by the adults they trust and by their peers) are broken down, beaten, and occasionally killed and resurrected – and this includes their guardians, who are either also children or in their late teens at most. The narrative says that while sometimes the abusers will be brought to justice, there will always be new ones ready to manipulate you, and the only thing you can do is get mentally stronger to withstand it all and grasp what happiness you can. Kinda depressing.

We pick up where we left off last time, with Jude seemingly betraying his agent and forcing Nadeshiko to make an impossible decision on who gets to live and who gets to die. The way Nadeshiko handles this will surprise no one, but it does lead to her and Liam ending up kidnapped – this makes how many times Nadeshiko has been kidnapped? – and everyone else having to try to track them down. After she wakes up, Jude explains what’s going on – turns out that not-America is using the Agents as a cash cow in order to line the pockets of the rich and powerful, which is technically a spoiler but is so thuddingly obvious that I am happy just mentioning it here. Jude wants to expose the man in charge of it all, and this kidnapping attempt was the best way to do it. Unfortunately for Jude, he doesn’t bother to explain this to Liam.

On the bright side, this is very well written. The thriller and action aspects are impeccably done, and you want to keep turning the pages as fast as you can. Nadeshiko’s powers, when they are inevitably explained as being different from what everyone thought, make a lot of the book lighter than expected… but look, that’s only a matter of degree. It is astonishing how literally EVERYONE in this series hates themselves with a passion. Even the arrogant, obnoxious Agent of Winter that not-America has proves to be an insecure child who is deeply upset that her mentor turns out to be a bad guy, and whose attempts at “making friends” with their agent of Spring have traumatized the other girl. Rindo and Nadeshiko are the highlight of this, and past, present and future collide to let us see a confession that we don’t really want but is inevitable anyway. I’ve joked before about how this book is Codependency: The Light Novel, but it’s no joke here – everyone knows the relationships between Agents and their Guards are totally fucked up, and yet they can’t do anything about it except say “that’s the way it is, I guess”.

The next book in the series is not scheduled in North America yet, and that’s probably for the best, because I’m exhausted. If you love the emotional torment of children for plot purposes, this will be like catnip for you. For everyone else, just endure, like the cast has to.

Even a Replica Can Fall in Love, Vol. 5

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By Harunadon and raemz. Released in Japan as “Replica Datte, Koi o Suru” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

While I’ve very much enjoyed this series, each of the previous four volumes has explored topics related to replicas in some way. What are replicas, why do people have replicas, can replicas fall in love (title drop), and what happens when a human with a replica dies. This led us to the climax of the fourth book, which was about what happens if a replica dies… except no, it did not work out that way, because in the interim Sunao decided to get her life together, move beyond the need for having a replica, and finally grant Nao autonomy so that she could be with the one she loved. The problem, of course, is that the books were mostly written from Nao’s perspective, and so there was a gap of “what actually happened here?” left to be filled. It was fine for the climax of the “main” series, because really all that was waiting for was a dramatic run and love confession, but I’m glad we get to see what happened before: Sunao’s path to loving herself.

The subtitle of this volume is “Side: Original”, and that’s exactly what we get here. We start with Nao’s declaration to Sunao that she’s going back inside her, and just like the reader, Sunao knew that’s exactly what would happen. Fortunately, Sunao decides to simply make Nao vanish rather than fully integrate her into herself. Unfortunately, that means Sunao has to negotiate the rest of her time in high school without a safety valve or a way out, and it’s hard, given that Sunao regards herself as a bad person and thinks no one else could like her. Despite this, over the course of the book, she learns to stand up for herself over her former friends turned bullies, learns to stand up for others, and learns to give support when it’s needed but only the support that’s needed. And she even gets her own love story, with a somewhat unexpected person.

This volume was a lot simpler to read in many ways – replicas barely come up – but that doesn’t mean it was less affecting. Sunao’s POV is suffocating a great deal of the time, especially in the middle of the book when everything seems to be going wrong, and watching her deflect and avoid those problems was not only painful to read but honestly felt a bit TOO familiar. I wondered if she would avoid Ricchan entirely the whole book, regarding it as “she’s Nao’s friend now”, but honestly it ended up being that most of the entire incident in childhood that led to their falling out turned out to be something that Sunao just wasn’t emotionally mature enough to connect the dots on. She gains that emotional maturity here, in a number of really good scenes, and it all leads to a confession that she’s very reluctant to hear, and instinctively wants to reject, simply as she cannot come to terms with why anyone would feel like that about HER. (It’s very important, by the way, that her love interest has, without knowing about replicas, definitely fallen for Sunao and not Nao.)

There’s one last volume, apparently short stories. This feels like the big finale, though. A must read for fans of the series, especially those who watched the anime try to speedrun events as anime often does.