Monthly Archives: May 2023

How to Win Her Heart on the Nth Try

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By Ichine Kamijo and Yu Shiroya. Released in Japan as “n-kaime no Koi no Musubikata” by Kadokawa Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Judy Jordan.

Years ago, in the pre-light novel days, it always seemed that manga brought over to English speakers was written purely for teenagers in middle school and high school, and the romances all revolved around school clubs and walking home after practice. I would wish that for once, just for once, we could get a romance about grownups, in real jobs, and dealing with grownup concerns. So! I have good news and bad news. The good news is that this is definitely a book for and about grownups, with grownup concerns, and they have white-collar office jobs. The bad news: if you, the reader, work in a white-collar office job, be aware that this book will hammer on your anxieties and fears for 250 pages until you want to shriek. Every “you or your subordinate screwed up, please come to the manager’s office at once” nightmare is seen here, right down to having your laptop stolen. Fortunately, this book is written for exhausted workaholic women, and so there’s a guy who can come to the rescue.

Nagi is a systems engineer with a tragic past, working at a smallish company owned by her uncle. She has two juniors, and her entire life seems to run on stress and last-minute deadlines. There’s certainly no time for romance. That said, she also has Keigo, a childhood friend who works in the same company. He’s a great guy. And a good friend. On Keigo’s end, he’s been trying for the last fifteen years to subtly convey to the oblivious Nagi that he loves her, and none of it has stuck. And in a high stress office like theirs, the question is not “when will these two finally realize that they’re a couple?”, but “can they get together as a couple before they either die of overwork or end up having to take the fall for some disaster that seems to constantly be happening?”.

I can definitely see this book’s appeal to women, with the core not being “I just need a man who can understand me” but “I just need a man who can finish all my work for me”. Both hero and heroine are flawed people with very real hangups that prevent this from easily resolving, and even after getting together we see things aren’t smooth sailing. The most interesting part of the book was probably Nagi’s junior Saotome, who is small and cute, which gets her a lot of attention. This is unwanted attention, because she’s in love with Nagi. She and Keigo don’t get on, of course, but eventually manage to work things out. Other than that, I will again note that this book can make for uncomfortable romance reading. You keep waiting for Nagi to be fired for some reason or another, or have bad things happen to her. It’s definitely showing me I could never make it in Japanese office culture.

So if you want a workplace romance, and don’t mind that the male lead tends to swoop in to save the day a lot, this is pretty good.

A Pale Moon Reverie, Vol. 1

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By Kuji Furumiya and Teruko Arai. Released in Japan as “Tsuki no Shirosa o Shirite Madoromu” by DRE Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Jason Li.

This is definitely one of those series where you can sell it to others by simply saying who wrote it. For the right reader, “from the same author as Unnamed Memory” is quite the draw, and this series has a lot of the same strengths that made Unnamed Memory such a compelling work. Most notably that it feels like a “normal” fantasy work, rather than one filtered through Japanese light novels and webnovels. It’s refreshing these days to read books without stats, adventurer’s guilds, and the rest. This series is creating its own world, thank you very much, and the world is quite compelling. The two leads will also seem very familiar to those who’ve read Unnamed Memory, though they both lack the experience and maturity of Oscar and Tinasha. And, of course, there’s also the prose, which is excellent (and well translated). This is a book to curl up in a chair and take your time reading (and you’ll have to, it’s a long one).

Xixu is a shadeslayer, trained to seek out shades (basically evil ghosts) and destroy them. He’s very good at his job, but is overly serious and dour. He’s sent by the king (at the behest of the king’s seer) to Irede, a legendary city devoted to wine, women and song… literally. While there, he’s introduced to Sarida, the proprietress of the Pale Moon, a courtesan house with very strict rules – the courtesans pick their customers, not the other way around. Sari is only sixteen, and (as it turns out) has not yet chosen any customers, but she has other things that concern her, mainly that she has supernatural powers that can aide shadeslayers in binding the shades to make them easier to get rid of. As the book goes on, Xixu and Sari find themselves growing far closer to each other than they’d expected.

As with Unnamed Memory, this is basically an omnibus of two volumes that could have easily sold as normal 200-page books, but the author seems to like doorstoppers. Xixu is a good male lead, being dedicated and humorless but also caring and perceptive. Sari is more complicated, partly due to reasons I won’t spoil, but she’s also the one who tends to get in trouble a lot – she’s not quite a damsel in distress, don’t get me wrong, but when the climax of the book is about to happen you will find her at the center being restrained by the bad guys. As for the rest of the cast, I was a bit disappointed that the traitor in the first book was the obvious choice, though at least there was some attempt to throw us off the trail for a bit. I also very much like the idea of a courtesan house where the first rule is consent. But mostly I loved the worldbuilding and the writing. It’s the reason to read this.

This came from a webnovel, which is finished online, but we all know that doesn’t necessarily mean anything to publishers. Still, I hope it does well for Drecom, as I love this author and want to read more of this odd but endearing couple.

Accidentally in Love: The Witch, the Knight, and the Love Potion Slipup, Vol. 1

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By Harunadon and Eda. Released in Japan as “Koisuru Majo wa Elite Kishi ni Horegusuri o Nomasete Shimaimashita: Itsuwari kara Hajimaru Watashi no Dekiai Seikatsu” by DRE Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Arthur Miura.

I don’t expect every book I read to be good, and I know that a lot of them can pretty much be summed up as “this is an adequate representation of its genre”, but I usually like something that I can grab on to, if only for the reviews. Something that’s a bit odd, or weird, or different. No, I’m not going to talk about THAT word yet, more on that later. Instead I will note that this rather normal, generic romance novel has an odd quirky humor at times that sort of leaps out and grabs you. It’s as if the author is coloring in the lines in a book, but can’t resist all of a sudden just drawing halfway across the next page. And the scene in this book, about halfway through, when Cecily gets eaten by a wyvern, was exactly that. I laughed till I cried. The only drawback is it wasn’t illustrated.

Cecily, who grew up loving fairy tales about princess tricked by evil witches, is horrified when she comes of age to discover that she is, in fact, one of those witches. Now she has to live on her own for two years, as is tradition, and peddle her craft. The trouble is that Cecily is horribly introverted, so for the most part lives in a little house in the big woods. One day, her potion that changes her eye color wears off right as she’s wrongfully accused of theft, and a nasty incident is about to happen. Fortunately, she’s saved by a handsome knight. Unfortunately, she misunderstands something when overhearing him later and gets mad, deciding that (just as her mother did to her father), she’s going to brew a love potion and have the knight drink it! Surely nothing can go wrong.

So, let’s talk about the Princess. To be fair to the translator, I’m fairly certain there was no good way to translate this and not have it have the exact impact it has, that vague frisson of “a 14-year-old princess should not be using that word”. That said love potions aside, this is a sweet and fluffy romance novel for the most part, so when you recommend it you’re really going to have to say “also her best friend the princess says “loins” constantly”. Or else you’ll get glared at. The loins also fall into that quirky humor I mentioned above. I’m glad it’s there, as the two leads are not anything to write home about. I admit Cecily’s type, the nervous, self-hating introvert, is never my favorite protagonist to read, so that doesn’t really help. That said, I did enjoy the quirks, and, as you might have guessed, no one really does anything against their will here.

Feels complete to me, but a second book is on the way. If you enjoy collecting J-Novel Heart titles or just want to see a young woman get swallowed by a lizard, this is a good book to check out.