From Corporate Drone to Mincemaster! One Order of Dragon Coming Right Up!, Vol. 1

Leave a reply

By Minato Minato and Tsukito. Released in Japan as “Makikomarete Shoukan Sareta Genkai OL, Guild Shozoku no [Mamono Kaitai Jou] toshite Funtouchuu ~Dragon desu ka? Mochiron Sabakemasu!~” by Mag Garden Novels. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by piyo.

I mean, it’s FINE, I guess. I enjoyed reading it. I’ll read more. The main characters are all likeable enough. But god, I do not think I have ever come across a light novel with as little originality as this one, a LN that feels like someone completed a Mad Libs for Isekai and wrote the book based on the results. There’s an office lady so ground down from overwork that the only surprise is that it’s a normal summoning and not “dead from work”. There’s her opposite number, a saint who seemingly ticks all the “evil” boxes from the moment she opens her mouth. We get an awkward dorky guy who clearly likes her, and a cool but distant guy who clearly likes her, and one of these is very clearly far ahead of the other. Sorry, dorky guy. There’s an adorable pet monster. And there’s Sachi herself, OP as hell and plucky as all git out.

Sachi Hasumi is 21 years old. Her parents are dead. She dreamed of inheriting her grandfather’s restaurant, but he told her to go to college and work a nice job. Then it turned out the restaurant was about to go under. Then he died. Now she’s working for a black company, pulling triple all-nighters for no extra pay. No boyfriend, no friends. Then, as she walks home one night, she is summoned to another world! Or rather,.. the girl next to her is. The other girl is the Saint. Sachi is a “mincemaster”. She’s essentially left forgotten by the side of the magic circle. Oh, and of course, one way trip, no returning home. Then she meets the vice-chairman of the adventurer’s guild, who thinks her mincemaster talent is just what they need, given they’re drowning in monsters adventurers have brought back.

Now that I’ve gotten the bad out of the way, this is perfectly fine, it’s just the most unoriginal thing ever. Things I enjoyed: Sachi’s growing realization that she now has a job where people appreciate her work, she has normal hours and days off, and she’s paid well. There’s no doubt this is partly written as an OL fantasy of getting out of your hellish job, and it works just fine there. I also did appreciate, even if I wish we’d seen it at the start, the brief side story showing the saint, months later, on the road, desperately trying to level up her miserable saint powers, and discovering most of her arrogant bravado came from sheer relief at being away from her Education Parents who say she will be a doctor or she will be disowned. I expect she will still be a bitch when she sees how well Sachi is doing, but at least she has a REASON to be one. Oh yes, and Sachi’s receptionist friend Ann is great fun, especially when she mocks the fact that Sachi is 100% oblivious to the two hotties hitting on her.

This does have a Volume 2, so we will get more. I expect it will remain a coloring book that does not step outside the lines, but it is… pleasant.

Assassin Empress Bellreuge

Leave a reply

By Aoi Miyamae and Hatori Kyouka. Released in Japan as “Ansatsu Jotei Bellreuge ~Shiitagerareshi Koujo wa Ai o Ete Nariagaru~” by Mag Garden Novels. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Alex Castor.

I think for the sake of my sanity I’m going to treat this book the way that I treated Once Upon a Witch’s Death, which also was licensed by Yen as a one-shot and then had future volumes roll out much later in Japan. CIW notably has not called this Volume 1, implying it’s complete in one book. The webnovel is very clearly complete, but this book stops just before the climactic battle and has a bunch of side stories instead. The author says in the afterword they were surprised this got a LN pickup at all. So, let’s put it this way: if this does have a second volume to wrap things up, then I definitely recommend it, as I found it a lot of fun, especially its heroine. If this is all that we get, I suspect it will just be frustrating. And if it turns out the book is actually complete and my digital copy is missing a chapter or two, please let me know.

Let’s also get a content warning out of the way: this book is filled with blood and gore, most of it caused by the heroine killing people. They’re all trying to kill her, to be clear, she’s not evil. Bellreuge is the 2nd princess of an empire, an illegitimate child, and has spent literally her entire life dodging assassination attempts and learning from her mother how to fight back. Her older sister was briefly sweet and loving to her, but when the Queen died big sis turned 100% evil. To avoid constant assassins every day, Bellreuge became her sister’s handmaiden, essentially working as a slave and being abused left and right. Now, finally, her sister is going to be married. Except… the margrave’s son, a man with a bloody reputation, proposes to Bellreuge instead!

That synopsis covers about the first 2 pages of this book. The rest involves Bellreuge being forced to escape constant walls of people trying to kill her and going to the margravate, which turns out to be a country of hotheads who love to fight, and her new fiance is merely the worst of them. Bellreuge herself is so emotionally beaten down by years of abuse and constant death threats that, while she’s perfectly capable of acting like a royal princess if she needs to, she also tends to go to “stiletto in the brain” as the “when all you have is a hammer” answer. She and Asturm, her fiance, are awkward around each other for about half the book as they simply haven’t communicated at all, and the scene where they turn an archery contest into a “yes, I think I could fall in love with you” is the best in the book. Unfortunately, much as Bellreuge wants to simply avoid anything to do with her situation, everyone else in the world knows she has to fight her sister and become Empress. They gather armies and prepare to do battle…

And then we get short stories from the POV of her maid/bodyguard, Asturm himself, and his little sister to round things off. The end! Highly recommended if there’s a 2nd volume eventually, mildly recommended if this is all we get.

In Another World with Household Spells, Vol. 6

Leave a reply

By Rika and HIROKAZU. Released in Japan as “Isekai ni Kita kedo, Seikatsu Mahou shika Tsukaemasen” by Mag Garden Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by sachi salehi.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned Ascendance of a Bookworm in these reviews yet, which is a bit of a surprise. We do have a reincarnated girl who is now in the nobility but knows little about it, trying to earn money for her family by inventing things she remembers from back in Japan. She has a posse of friends and classmates, she has adorable siblings, and she has a dad who’s kinda useless. (Sylvester is the dad I mean in this case.) And she’s even intriguing royalty. But if this is a Bookworm lookee likee, there’s one thing that it’s been missing to this point: where’s Ferdinand? Good news, as hitting this series like a bomb is court mage Primus Geitz. He’s the most powerful magic user in the country. He’s a bit of a jerk, but also immediately understands Patience in a way few have so far. And he’s already proposing, much to her horror. Now we’ll see how close it really gets to Bookworm.

We pick up where we left off, with Patience and company discovering amazing new things in the local ruins. As the book goes on, more and more people show up to verify and explore this, and unfortunately, Patience (and later Angela) is the only one who can activate the Open Sesame trap door that lets them into this. She’s also using her household magic to clean ancient moldy ruins and ancient hard to read texts into just as new. And she’s using echolocation to find where the electricity and wiring is in this ancient ruin, as that’s a lost art in this magic-only world. And she’s using teleportation to rescue her brother from … well, not certain death, but a scary dark place. And she’s also telling everyone how solar power works. Finally, it’s up to Geitz, rapidly becoming her least favorite person, to say what we all guessed: she’s not using Household Magic. It’s a lot bigger than what.

Again, Patience is going to have to deal with a fiance soon. Not only does this world not really believe in marrying for love, it also tends to engage em young to keep them tied down somewhere important. That’s especially true of Patience, who is rapidly becoming the most important 11-year-old in history. And this book doesn’t even have half of her fiance candidates. Probably because it adds Geitz. Unlike Ferdinand, though, Geitz has not yet revealed his softer side, and is happily ready to bribe and blackmail Patience’s brothers as he realizes that she’ll do anything they say. I suppose she can always try marrying royalty… but the job she actually is starting to want, a sort of wandering diplomat, is feeling farther away with this book, as she simply as too much magic and too many innovations.

And what’s worse, this arc still isn’t over. And there’s far too many plot strands still up in the air, including Patience’s father. Did I also mention she’s now a Baronetess? I didn’t even know that had a feminine version. For those who enjoy watching OP tweens suffer.