By Bokuto Uno and Miyuki Ruria. Released in Japan as “Nanatsu no Maken ga Shihai suru” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

Reign of the Seven Spellblades is one of those rare light novel series that has, if not a huge fan wiki, at least a relatively up to date wiki, which is very useful when you have dramatic tragic deaths and you cannot actually remember who these people are. At one point I paused, looked up a name, went “ah, right, from Book 8!”, and moved on. That said, this is the final volume of the big Kimberly invasion arc, and we’re fifteen books is, so the author is finally killing off, permanently, actual people who have been around a long while and who we care about. I’ll get into the details of that a bit below, so spoiler warning. But I also need to emphasize that, even though this is a book filled with war, death and grieving, it never quite hits despair, and the overall theme is triumph, even if it’s at a painful cost. This book is optimistic. Well, as optimistic that a book about a boy killing off all the faculty can be.

Summarizing this is hard, as it’s mostly 250 pages of fight goes one way, then the other way. Bad guys die tragically. A few good guys die tragically. A lot of people we’ve never heard of die tragically. We also do find out why the bad guys are doing this, or at least why they’re saying they are. And we get some flashbacks that remind me that, much as I’m enjoying our main cast working their way through magic college, all their parents did the same thing a generation before, and they were all equally eccentric/bonkers. (The book is mostly serious, but the funniest bit has the students asking Katie if she’s all right and then having to clarify they mean “not possessed or consumed, we know you’re completely bananas”). In the end, the school is saved… just barely.

So, first of all, none of the six main characters die. (I have to be careful not to say “main six” because I know one day I’ll mistype it and this will become My Little Pony.) Katie, aside from the comedy bit I mention above, is entirely absent. Chela is mostly there to be support, the author clearly didn’t have anything for her to do. Nanao too is mostly absent aside from the very end. But if you like Oliver, Pete, and Guy you’re gonna be happy. Certainly happier than they are. Rita Appleton has been around since the 4th book and her crush on Guy has been around almost as long, and she gets to do what a lot of teenage girls with a crush would fantasize about, die to save her beloved. Richard Andrews has been around since the very start, the definition of the “arrogant rival guy turned reluctant ally turned reliable ally”, and it’s that reliability, as well as compassion, that leads to him saving Oliver, Nanao and Chela. Now a few characters I was sure would die somehow did not (there is more than one teacher given a backstory that is literally “I want to die”, and yet…), but this victory came at a cost. Still, it was damn cool as a fictional story.

Next time I assume we will be back to Oliver’s vengeance… whenever next time is. The 15th book came out in Japan over a year ago, and the series is now caught up. We wait for the author, and remember the fallen.