By Kooriame and Nami Hidaka. Released in Japan as “Lady Rose wa Heimin ni Naritai” by Kadokawa Beans Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Caroline W.

Content warning: this book is filled with suicide ideation, and has several attempts near the end, though none are successful.

I know that it’s not economically feasible and would not be popular, but sometimes when you get a light novel series like this I wish that it could have been one 800-page book. Or at least have all three come out on the same day. Because this third and final volume of the Lady Rose series really requires you to remember everything from the first two, and the series rewards going back and checking on certain scenes over and over again. That said, if you did what I did, and read the books as they came out, and tried to recall what was going on, you should still be okay here. Fii’s story is done, and she doesn’t even play a major role in this book till near the end. Unfortunately, that’s just in person. In the background, Fii trying to escape her noble life and become a commoner turns out to drive a heroine to dark, depressing thoughts. And that’s just when she’s five years old.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but our protagonist is hit by a truck (while pushing a girl out of the way of the same truck) and winds up in the world of Savior of Nations: Lady Rose. She is THRILLED. She doesn’t even care that she’s in the body of the villainess, Liliana. This means that she gets to see her favorite character, SETH! Immediately deciding to learn reading, writing, and proper etiquette, despite the reactions of her father and servants, she does succeed in meeting Seth, as well as Melvin, who she declares a “friend of convenience”. Unfortunately, when Liliana turns five, Felicia arrives on the scene, and Liliana gets an immediate lesson in the difference between one who tries her hardest and one who is simply perfect. Unfortunately, over the next ten years or so, this means that Liliana gradually loses her grip on reality.

The first few books already had a tinge of psychological horror. With this third book, it goes beyond tinge and gets into the deep waters. I haven’t seen a light novel get so far down the path of fucked-up narration since I Swear I Won’t Bother You Again!. Even when Liliana begins to realize the possible cause for her mindset… grief at her happy, loving life being cut senselessly down by a truck… she rationalizes that it’s too late now. The bulk of this book is Liliana trying to find a way to die. Fortunately, we know how that goes, as we read the second book, but still. This book also has a few surprises in store – notably one of the busiest Truck-kuns I’ve ever seen in an isekai – but for the most part it is best when focusing on Liliana’s desperate attempts to fix things, then fix everyone but herself. The one flaw is the almost total lack of Seth. The author says that having Seth in the book more would have given away the twist, and yeah, I guess, but I still think the impact of the end might have been better if he’d had a larger presence.

This series is now done, though I do wish we’d seen the stories that were only suggested where she apologizes to her maids. Liliana’s inability to really read people at all has affected her maids more than anyone else, and I hope they get some comfort and relief. As for Liliana herself, I think things will be fine now. She’s had magic bread, after all.

By Kooriame and Nami Hidaka. Released in Japan as “Lady Rose wa Heimin ni Naritai” by Kadokawa Beans Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Caroline W.

We have had numerous books where I have observed that the protagonist and/or the antagonist tends to be a bit too quick to see the world they’ve been reincarnated in as the actual otome game they remember, rather than as a world with living, breathing humans with real feelings. That said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a series lean quite so hard into the concept as Lady Rose, in which Lady Rose has to be handed a lot of the answers to the mystery she’s trying to solve as she is SO ingrained into the mindset that everyone is like the characters she remembers that she not only can’t see the forest for the trees, but can’t even see the tree. And when you add in the fact that, like so many other shoujo light novels, she is utterly unable to see her own value, calling everything she does “acting”, and you end up with a book that is less of a mystery and more of a psychological horror story.

We pick up immediately after the cliffhanger from Book One, as Felicia and Seth confront her adopted younger brother and try to figure out why he’s kidnapped Liliana… though this ends up being more an exercise in making Felicia face reality, something that proves to be… very difficult, frankly. Things are not helped by the fact that Liliana is now actively trying to kill herself, and Felicia has to figure out why that’s happening. And oh yes, Evan was also in on the kidnapping. This means that both Shade and Evan are going to be executed, unless… Rose goes back to the castle, and pleads with the King for clemency. Something which is unlikely to have any impact, unless of course she goes ahead and marries Nika, who she at least finally admits she loves. Will she be forced to give up on everything she’s fought for?

I’m gonna be spoiling a bit of the climax of the book here, but I just have to talk about how delighted I was by the ending, which until the last page I thought was going to be reversed. Hell, so did everyone else in the cast, and they’re very surprised at the final outcome. Because this is not “Lady Rose Learns How Important She Is”, or “Lady Rose Makes Sacrifices But Finds True Love”, it’s “Lady Rose Wants to Be a Commoner”, and it’s absolutely committing to that bit. Now, she and Nika are still being cute and blushy at the end, but notably: she’s a commoner, he’s a prince, and they aren’t married. She not only defies fate but defies the narrative, and I love that. (I also love the fakeout opening of Chapter 6, which gave me a brief heart attack till I laughed).

The series ends here… except it doesn’t, as there is a third and final volume, from the perspective of Liliana, the “saint”. Honestly, any perspective that isn’t Felicia’s will be welcome at this point – she’s too unreliable a narrator. Very much enjoying this.

By Kooriame and Nami Hidaka. Released in Japan as “Lady Rose wa Heimin ni Naritai” by Kadokawa Beans Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Caroline W.

This came out as a manga from JNC well before the light novel was licensed – in fact, the manga’s six volumes all finished before the light novel was licensed. I didn’t read the manga when it came out, but I experienced it, as this was a popular title to see liveblogged on Tumblr. And from what I saw, it appeared to be a pretty broad comedy, mostly dealing with the heroine’s over the top reactions to things and her obsessive love of bread and cute young women, in that order. (The fact that all the love interests are male is neither here nor there – when she hears a rumor she’s in love, she asks which of the two girls she knows it is). I enjoy comedy. But as I read this first book, I realized that there was a lot more to it. There was mystery, as both our heroine and the reader try to figure out the plot. And there’s traumatic backstory. In fact, that’s one of the mysteries.

We open with a very familiar villainess book trope. Felicia Schwarose is condemned in public by her fiance, the Crown Prince, and dumped for a woman of a lower noble rank. This time, though, our reincarnated girl actually IS the heroine – and she has spent her entire life in this otome game world gunning for this bad end. Now she’s disowned by her family, but they give her a small house in the commoner area and some cash. This means she’s finally free of the noble training that she’s hated and can live a happy life working in a bakery – helped along by her past life, where she also did this, and is the only reason that a duke’s daughter can survive without servants. Unfortunately for her, she is the ONLY one who wants this future for herself, and she reckons without the impact she had on the rest of the cast.

I was expecting the standard “hit by a truck” death, and I got it, but it was everything else about her life that startled me. Let’s just say that a lot of what Felicia, aka Fii, has been doing is driven very heavily by her own past trauma from her previous life. Here, she’s very good at arranging things so that all the dominoes can fall in place and she can scamper off to live in her bakery, but reckons without the impact this has on everyone who knows her. Like so many other otome game imports, she sees this world as a game, no matter how much she tries to deny it, and reckons without everyone just really liking her for her actions rather than the plot. By the way, in case I made this seem more serious than it is, there really IS a goofy quality to some of it, particularly the bread jokes, and the contrast between her inner and outer voices.

There’s only three volumes to this, and I think the third one is a side story focusing on the “villainess”, so this should wrap up next time. Which is good, as it ends with an action-packed cliffhanger. I will get tired of this genre one day, but not today. This was a terrific read.