By Kei Yose and Ruria Miyuki. Released in Japan as “Akuyaku Reijou wa Shaberimasen” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Adam.

These are chunky books, with each volume being around twice the size of your average light novel. As a result, I deeply appreciate that the book starts with a “story so far” catching me up on what happened in Book One, because after that the reader is not really given any more help. There are lots of characters in this, and you need to remember who they are and which faction they’re with. More characters are introduced. Some characters we thought would be major players in this book end up being taken off the board instead. Liliana has changed a lot about the way that the “plot” of this world is supposed to go, but it feels like fate wants to railroad her anyway. Things are definitely not helped by her attempts to distance herself from the love interests, which not only fails, but actually gets worse. Basically, she’s so good at everything that she may accidentally end up as dead as the narrative wants.

Liliana can actually speak now, though she hides that from most people. And she’s much calmer and better at powerful magic, meaning she has an alive handmaiden rather than the dead handmaiden she had in the narrative. Despite this, the world keeps moving on, and she keeps trying to figure out how to fix things so she escapes her fate. Maybe it can be by understanding the complicated politics of the various countries that deal with them – especially the Empire, who seem to be actively sabotaging them. Maybe she can save the entire country when a massive monster swarm attacks the royal capital on the Prince’s birthday party. Maybe she can make an ally, and indeed hire, the assassin who’s been trying to kill her and her allies. And maybe she can get Riley to choose someone else to be his fiancee, though honestly, that’s the hardest goal. After all, he’s mostly figured out what she’s hiding.

This book has a problem a lot of light novels taken from webnovels do, which is that the big climax of the book happens a little over halfway through it, and the ending is sort of a quiet “to be continued”. I suppose it’s better than a nasty cliffhanger, but after 389 pages it can feel anticlimactic. That said, we did have lots of climaxes in the pages beforehand. The addition of Obsidian to the cast is fantastic, as every heroine needs someone who will snark at her and also try to kill her just so she can prove she’s still better than him. I also liked the subplot around Austin, who ends up going out on the monster hunt even though he’s too inexperienced. He survives, but clearly needs therapy, and I appreciate this is recognized and forced onto him. As for Liliana, I think she may need to admit soon that she and Riley are in fact a perfect couple. Then again, she still isn’t even ten years old yet.

If you like your villainess stories to be more like black coffee than sweet tea, this is right yup your street.