By Toryuu and hamm. Released in Japan as “Kimo Ota Mob Yōhei wa, Mi no Hodo o Wakimaeru” by Overlap Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Josh DM.

Last time I mentioned that even if we saw the occasional good noble, we always had tons of evil nobles to go around. That also applies to mercenaries and military. John does meet the occasional good person, and gets along with them. But his power of being the main character means that assholes tend to flock to him, because this series has an agenda and that agenda is “stop saying you’re going to tell your mom”. Every terrible noble in this book seems to have one go-to out, which is “I am the child of an important person and if you don’t do everything I say, I will tell on you and your life will be ruined”. The sad thing is this usually works, as it’s very easy to punch down in the world John lives in. Fortunately, in this volume we also see a few who see how well that works and try to do it WITHOUT the actual family connections. They just lie. It doesn’t go well.

Despite taking up so much of the cover that she starts to obscure the title, the Empress only gets a side story at the ed of the book, possibly to justify the art. For the most part, though, this book functions like the other one does. John takes a job, does the job, sometimes has to have a cool space battle, dumb arrogant assholes hate him, smart people who don’t judge by appearances are impressed with him, then he goes home and buys up otaku stuff. Two things stand out in this book: first, after a near miss where his dad almost ends up in debt again, John goes to visit his family, who are mostly what you’d expect. The other is that starting from the 6th book, things may take a different turn. The anti-imperialist pushback has been getting louder every book, it’s being helped along by enemy agents, and now we’re finally arriving at war.

There was an amusing yet also educational part of the book, reminding me a bit of the “People’s Front of Judea” part of Life of Brian, where John and Gonzales discuss the different anti-imperial factions and how they all have slightly different aims but also all have the same “the Empress must go” endgame. The book also does “having your cake and eating it too” better than most – as with other entries in the series, the art is very much showing you how many women orbit John’s life, how many of them have huge breasts, and how often they like to shower or bathe. The art is here to draw in readers. Then they get there, though, they find a world where any woman who tries to do her job ends up harassed by endless guys asking for sex wherever they go. Even teaming up with other women may not help, as this means having to deal with women who also fall under the ‘asshole’ umbrella. The Empire may be a poor way of running a world, but I have no confidence any of the other factions would run it any better, and they’d likely be worse. It’s tough to be a woman in this series.

All this plus a SURPRISE REVELATION, which I will leave unspoiled. Will John be drawn into war? Will he be forced to have an emotion? Will he realize how much Fialka wants to jump his bones? We’ll see. In the meantime, enjoy your not-safe-for-public-transit volume.