Taking My Reincarnation One Step at a Time: No One Told Me There Would Be Monsters!, Vol. 10

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By KAYA and Naru. Released in Japan as “Tensei Shōjo wa Mazu Ippo kara Hajimetai: Mamono ga Iru toka Kiitenai!” by MF Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Amy Osteraas.

Each volume further a writer gets into a series, the more difficult it gets to write an ending that wraps everything up in a nice, neat bow and resolves all the hanging plot and character points. And since that’s the case, it’s always glorious to see a series that does it. This final volume of Good on Wolves (the series’ unofficial nickname among its fans here) is everything I wanted to see. The series returns to its roots, acknowledges how far it’s come, and settles back down after spending the previous volumes roaming all over the map. There’s also a proposal here, though this series is always going to be fairly mild about romance. The big emotional high for this story wasn’t Allen saying to Sara that they should get married and build a house, but rather the mountain wolves asking everyone to trust them and fighting together with the cast to fend off cockatrices. Good doggos to the end, even as scary wolves.

Sara and her friends are in the capital, living their best life. But they hear that things are a little rough in Rosa right now. They were building a paved road from the city to the Dark Mountain, but work stopped halfway. What’s more, the mayor apparently looks haggard. Who’s the mayor? Why Ted, of course! Despite this, Sara wants to go back to Rosa. She wants to visit the cabin where she started in this world, and she’s made her peace with Ted and his jerk antics. So the whole crew go up there, only to find… things are better than expected? Ted is exhausting himself, but that’s more his personality than anything else. He even has a fiancee! The road project is stalled mostly as they’re out of magic stones. Fortunately, when Sara’s around, monsters are sure to follow, and now there’s a huge number of Cockatrices making life difficult for everyone.

Much of this book, like the previous one, is showing off how Sara has matured and become an adult, much to the surprise of some (she’ll always be short and look pretty young). Her teaching is first rate, and she even helps Ted with his romantic relationship (which is also relatively free of drama). The only dramatic moment is when there’s a crisis with several hunters needing supreme potions, a “either you get all better or it kills you” sort of potion. Sara’s been lucky to this point, but one of the hunters doesn’t survive. That said, Sara briefly castigates herself but recovers quickly. She’s basically a doctor through most of this, when she’s not using her barriers to do virtually anything. If there’s one minor nit I have, it’s that Allen feels a bit left out until the end of the book – I’d like to have seen more with just the two of them.

This is another series that I’ve always loved, going from a small insular mountain (that we don’t even realize is a dangerous dungeon till much later in the series) then expanding outwards from a refugee camp to a city to a bigger city and finally to the capital… then back to the mountain in the end. Bye, Sara. Enjoy your career, your married life, and your many, many pet wolves.

Starting on Hard Mode: God Levels, Got Problems, Vol. 2

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By Hanmenkyoushi and ririnra. Released in Japan as “Level Count Stop kara Hajimaru, Kamisama-teki Isekai Life: Saikyou Status ni Tenseishita node Suki ni Ikimasu” by DRE Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Jessica Speed.

I usually refer to this series, when I refer to it at all, by its main title before the colon, Starting on Hard Mode. That said, after reading this second volume, the subtitle is definitely standing up and making sure that it’s counted. Merlin really wants to be a standard OP isekai mooch, going out, killing monsters, then coming back and watching the trio of young women he’s picked up fight over him without actually realizing that’s what they’re doing. The thing is, though, that’s not why God really brought him here. He’s got ludicrous powers for a reason, and that reason also means that he can’t simply try to give everyone else the credit. For one thing, he’s still trying to deal with the prejudice in this world (though here we find that’s mostly an urban problem). More importantly, though, he’s simply not the sort of person who can stand back and let disaster strike just because he needs to hide who he is.

Merlin, Sophia, Sonia, and Noise have been going monster hunting around the city, but there really haven’t been very many monsters around lately. Elsewhere, we see various demons talking about an attempt to resurrect the Demon King, and what would be required in order to make it happen. At the same time, a new girl has shown up in the city, and she seems to know who Merlin is. She also has guards around her, and is very bad at hiding her identity. She’s Auriel, the fourth princess of this country, as well as the country’s Saint. She’s an outgoing, teasing young woman who starts in right away on trying to hit on Merlin – she doesn’t get anywhere, but he’s at least a bit quicker to notice it than with the others – and also makes it clear she’s happy to be a part of any harem they have going on. But is that really her true self? And when these plots all come together, will Merlin be able to stay just another adventurer?

Don’t get me wrong, a lot of this is standard isekai stuff, and I rolled my eyes at the cheesecake color page of Aurelia designed to lure in the average LN reader who wants sex. (There is no sex.) But I think this is a step up from the first book. I particularly liked the relationship between Sonia and Aurelia. Sonia doesn’t dislike Aurelia, per se, but she knows that her entire persona is false, and so is wary of her. As for Aurelia, she’s a standard light novel type – no one ever saw me as anything but a tool, so I have turned into a doll rather than a human – but because Sonia sees a lot of Aurelia’s self-sacrificing nature in herself – let’s remember this is the girl who wanted to die so that her sister could move on with her life a book ago – Sonia is willing to help her as a friend, which includes taking the bullet. Something that horrifies Aurelia, but also forces her to get stronger and hopefully move on from her past (and her awful family, who we may meet in Book 3?).

So yeah, still not a must-read, but I found this pretty solid. And it’s Drecom, so you know it won’t be 17+ volumes.

The Bladesmith’s Enchanted Weapons, Vol. 5

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By Kazuma Ogiwara and CARIMARICA. Released in Japan as “Isekai Toushou no Maken Seisaku Gurashi” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Ryan Burris.

While there are still bouts of humor in this series, it has not escaped my attention that each volume seems to be darker than the last, and this one was particularly dark. Dead adventurers, dead women and children, bandits everywhere, lots of justified hatred of nobles, and the realization that the city that our heroes live in really does have a lot of issues, and they’re desperately trying to force it to become a place that people might actually want to go. Which, frankly, it isn’t at the moment. The cast is also pretty static – we’ve met potential new characters, and one of them even returns in this book, but for the most part once we get to know them they leave the city. Hell, even Claudia threatens to take Lutz and go somewhere more welcoming. Though I suspect a lot of that is that she’s tired of Lutz throwing himself into deadly situations.

We open on a party of adventurers running from a zombie, and when one of them trips, the others… run away. She’s saved by Lutz, who happened to be in the dungeon and is also the main character, but she can’t rejoin that party. Fortunately, she finds another party… and then the exact same thing happens, only she is the one who runs while her new party are killed by a flame demon. She’s a mess. This flame demon has also massacred a village of carpenters Lutz worked with, and their village leader, Kevin, wants revenge. He’s a mess. And then there’s Djoser, head of the knights, such as they are, who is dealing with a bout of self-hatred, not at all helped by coming across bandits butchering everyone except an old merchant. He’s a mess. As for Lutz? He’s fine.

Well, OK, he’s not ALL fine. His beloved axe gets destroyed, but this allows him to make an even better katana with the remains. His main worry is that he keeps worrying Claudia, who loves Lutz a lot and very much does not want to keep being the good wifey who waits for her man to come home and worries he never will. She gets only one really good scene here, but it’s a pip, as she points out exactly how valuable she and Lutz are to the city and how much they’re starting to rely on him magically solving all their problems. We’re starting to see the Count trying to do something about it – creating a knight unit that not made of of noble rapists will help, though notably, even then they have to create a SECOND knight unit and leave the dissolute first one, as they all have connections. Better roads would help, but the bandit problem is not going away, and since the bandits just seems to be “those damn nobles”, it may take a more complicated fix than any of our leads can do. There’s good worldbuilding here, but the world is hard.

This remains one of my favorite new light novel titles, but it can be very grim. There are no easy solutions.