By Natsu Hyuuga and Touko Shino. Released in Japan as “Kusuriya no Hitorigoto” by Hero Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Kevin Steinbach.

It had to come sometime. The Apothecary Diaries has finally given us a short story volume. Well, sort of. This is not exactly the “we collected all the bookstore-exclusive stories and bunched them in a book” volume we see from other light novel series. The stories detail the main cast’s return to the rear palace after a year away in the West, what has happened in their absence, and what’s going to happen going forward. With one exception right at the very end, Maomao is not the POV character for any of these stories, which makes them unique. That said, Maomao certainly inhabits a lot of the narrative, and the ending of the 12th volume, which saw her finally coming to terms with what she and Jinshi have going on between them and showing it physically, turns out to be something that absolutely everyone can see written all over their faces. Which means… well, it means a lot more go stones have to be set in motion, as a Jinshi/Maomao pairing could be deadly if not handled properly.

The stories, which can sometimes stretch over multiple chapters: 1) Lahan has to deal with a hanging corpse found in Lakan’s chambers, which is made to look like a suicide but it’s soon clear isn’t; 2) Jinshi meets up with the Emperor and Empress, and is told that the rumbles over Gyokuyou’s son being the WRONG kind of future emperor have only been getting louder (it’s that red hair, you see); 3) Maamei has to deal with her sister-in-law returning from the west permanently injured, and her brother being far too attached to a duck, which is not a metaphor for former consort Lishu at all; 4) Yao and En’en still have not left Lahan’s residence, much to the irritation of everyone except Yao, who clearly has a crush on him. This ends up possibly getting solved by 5) the return of Lahan’s brother, and the demise of the best running gag in the series. 6) Maomao catches up on things at Verdigris House, including a shocking change; 7) Maomao is called to meet Ah-Duo, who has heard the rumors about her relationship with Jinshi and has a few things to say; 8) Jinshi invites Maomao to his residence so their love can finally be consummated… or at least that’s what everyone except Jinshi assumes.

The stories build up to the big climax (or rather, lack of climax) of the ending, in which Maomao is nervous but ready but Jinshi has not yet emotionally or politically prepared himself for the consequences of this relationship. It’s probably for the best they wait a bit more. Elsewhere, I was as startled as Maomao to hear that Meimei is no longer in the brothel, having been bought out by the Go champion we saw in previous books. We don’t even see her in this volume, which is bad in that she was the one Princess we got the most development for, but also good as it means Joka, the one we knew the least about, gets a spotlight, where we see she’s worrying about her future and wants to forget about her past, something which might be harder than it appears. I was relieved to see Chue has stuff to do here, and will not be written out anytime soon, mostly as she’s become my second favorite after Maomao herself. Best of all, though, is the way that the “Yao has a crush on Lahan” plotline, which every character hated and so did I, is resolved. It’s resolved so simply I’m amazed I never thought about it. And what’s more, despite the demise of the running gag I mentioned before (we now know his real name), it lives on! (he still can’t use it, because spoilers).

I assume with Vol. 14 we’ll be back to Maomao POV, and probably a lot more political backstabbing and murder. Till then, this is a great way to handle a short story collection.

By Natsu Hyuuga and Touko Shino. Released in Japan as “Kusuriya no Hitorigoto” by Hero Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Kevin Steinbach.

It’s very tempting to just type “Holy crap!” and leave the review at that, but I will try to go into more detail. This is the final book in the Western Capital arc (yes, we are back home by the end of the book, woo hoo), and it fires off all the guns it has been saving up since the 9th volume, with the last two-thirds or so being a very tense ride in which (sorry to spoil you a little, but this shouldn’t surprise you too much) Maomao is caught up in events and gets sort of kidnapped. She and Jinshi are apart, again, almost the entire book, but end it closer than ever before, with words not said but actions taken that will make the reader cheer. That said, what made *me* cheer was Chue. I’ve loved her since she was first introduced, even as I realized that she was clearly more than she seemed, and here’s where we find everything out and also worry that the author is going to kill her off. It’s a dangerous book.

At the end of the last book we saw the assassination of Gyoku-ou, and unsurprisingly we now have a succession crisis. The first son wants to give up his rights, the second son is against that, and the third son… is a very strange and deferential young man. Meanwhile, Maomao also meets the little grand-kids of the family: Gyokujun, a spoiled brat who serves as the annoying young boy you love to hate the entire book, and Xiaohong, a far-too-mature for her age girl who Maomao previously helped get over eating her own hair. As Maomao tries to sort out this tangled web of relationships, and also treat the occasional terrible nausea and horrible headaches, the first son is shot with a poison arrow. And the fallout of this puts Maomao far, far from the Western Capitol and in more danger than ever before.

I’ll be honest, I frequently have trouble with series that have huge casts with similar names, most of whom are some relation to each other, so a lot of the time I was trying to act like Maomao and just smile and nod. This isn’t even getting into the political situation, the fact that we’re still trying to save the capital from a famine, and even more bandits who somehow manage to be even worse than the first bandits, and one of the antagonists trying to immolate themselves. But come on, let’s talk about Miss Chue. After Maomao, she’s probably become my second favorite character in the series, even passing Shisui. And here we get her inevitable tragic backstory, and also frankly we almost get her tragic end. Possibly the most heartbreaking moment in the book is when Chue says “do I have no value anymore?” to her mentor (who I’ll leave a surprise). Fortunately, the answer appears to be “yes, you do still”, though Chue is probably going to have to find new ways to pull flags out of her sleeves in the future.

All this and Lahan’s brother too. Poor Lahan’s brother. Sometimes I can still hear his voice. In any case, this series remains amazing.

By Natsu Hyuuga and Touko Shino. Released in Japan as “Kusuriya no Hitorigoto” by Hero Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Kevin Steinbach.

Every once in a while on television you get a season where a character doesn’t appear for a while, or only appears on a couch, because the actress is pregnant or the actor has broken a leg. Or in Doctor Who, you get “Doctor-lite” episodes where he’s busy filming something else, so you write something where he’s absent most of the time. Obviously a book does not need to do that, but you might be forgiven for thinking that this volume had to have Maomao and Jinshi be fairly sedentary for a while, and not involved in the action all that much. Instead, the entire climax to the book is one of the big payoffs we’ve been waiting for, but Maomao is completely absent from it. In her place, we get confirmation about a character”s true agenda (which we all guessed), and get another character’s tragic backstory, which turns out to be very, very relevant.

We’re still dealing with the aftermath of the grasshopper invasion, not helped by the occasional aftershock of grasshoppers passing through. They’re low on food, low on fuel, and low on medicines. Maomao is helping to make “not quite as good” medicine with the next best thing, while also taking the time to save the life of a little girl who finds that hair and persimmons don’t mix. That said, the Western Capital is doing it’s best,. and it’s all thanks to… no, not Jinshi. Well, yes, Jinshi, however, someone else is taking all the credit, and that someone is Gyoku-ou, who has an agenda, and it involves the rumors that he thinks he has completely figured out about Jinshi’s parentage and a fierce desire to go to war with another country. Can he be stopped from dragging Jinshi into a war he doesn’t want any part of? And what does coal have to do with all of this?

Having worried you all, fear not, Maomao is in the majority of this volume. She’s separated from Jinshi most of the time, which means he spends much of the book in a bad mood. This is not helped by the fact that Chue squealed to Jinshi about the fact that Rikuson asked if Maomao would marry him last volume. This leads to some amusing scenes of Jinshi being jealous and angry and Maomao mostly being annoyed, but as it turns out there’s a very good reason behind what both of those characters did. They know who the important people are in the Western Capital, and the most important is not Gyoku-ou. That said, I wished he’d be a good antagonist, and he absolutely is that, coming across as clever, brutal, and with grand ambitions that sadly are a bit beyond his means. He’s also deeply tied up with the backstory we’ve been chasing about the Yi Clan, and I’d love to talk about that, but it really is a good spoiler.

All this plus a brief cameo from Yao and En’en, and even more Chue. Still one of the top light novel series coming out over here.