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The Tale of a Little Alchemist Blessed by the Spirits, Vol. 2

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By yocco and Junsui. Released in Japan as “Outo no Hazure no Renkinjutsushi: Hazure Shokugyou datta node, Nonbiri Omise Keieishimasu” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Andria McKnight. Adapted by Lex Reno.

One of the issues that a lot of isekai/reincarnation books have is the desire to make the main character not only overpowered, but also the only one who’s overpowered. They can do ludicrous stunts that make the normal people around them shudder. They’ve got the finest sword, the best magic, the most potent… you know. And everyone around them exists to be amazed. That’s why I was particularly pleased with this second volume of Little Alchemist. Sure, Daisy is still incredible, doing things that astound everyone. But she’s paired here with a dwarf girl who also is blessed by a spirit and can also do ludicrous things, and then meets and elf girl who is incomprehensibly overpowered. Their bodyguards are the two top adventurers in the country. Daisy’s brother and sister may turn out to be magic users beyond comprehension. It’s nice to see, and makes Daisy feel less like an author’s pet. Overpowered traits for all!

Things are going great for Daisy, who at ten years old finally has her own shop, a combination alchemist’s shop/bakery. And both halves of that take up equal amounts of her time. Sure, she’s continually seeking to improve her alchemy, deploy healing spells by essentially hurling potions at the person in need, and saving the kingdom (again) from the horrors of lead and mercury-based cosmetics, but she’s also here to make cheese! And invent hamburgers! And fried chicken! Oh yes, and also going on a quest for ingredients with her new friend Lynn, a dwarf with a very big hammer. That leads them to challenge a tower that no one has ever made it to the top of – they all died. Can Daisy manage to get past the part where he kills you?

The book knows exactly what its readers want, frankly. The vibe is the most important part of an atelier book, and that means that we’re not going to see Daisy struggling or having anxiety about her work. Things work out in this book,. and that’s fine. She doesn’t QUITE make it to the top of that tower, but she does solve the part where he kills you, and no one gets killed (except him). She not only saves one of the three world trees that keep the nation from falling to ruin, but she also then heals it so that it’s better than ever before. Elves threaten her, only to bow when they figure out who she is. This book is here for a relaxed vibe, and you can have the bubblegum, it’s not needed. Even when she’s trapped in a cave that’s designed to murder people, she gets out – though she does exhaust her mana. I guess that could be a crisis? Ish?

And I didn’t even mention my favorite part, which is that adventurers are delighted with her high-quality potion, not because of the strength, but because having to drink 5-6 normal potions makes you have to pee. So yeah, regarding plot and characterization? There are probably better series. Regarding atelier vibes? This is just right.

Looks Like a Job for a Maid! The Tales of a Dismissed Supermaid, Vol. 2

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By Yasuaki Mikami and Kinta. Released in Japan as “Maid nara Touzen desu. Nureginu wo Kiserareta Bannou Maid-san wa Tabi ni Deru Koto ni Shimashita” by Earth Star Novel. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Sylvia Gallagher.

I do appreciate that, in a story that features a ridiculously overpowered maid, her friend the incredibly powerful mage, her friend the genius inventor, and her friend the incredibly strong wolf girl, that this is a series that still manages to have its feet firmly on the ground. Sure, it would be a lot of fun to see every single problem defeated through the power of being a really good maid, but that’s not the story the author is trying to tell. We especially see that in the longest part of the book, where our party arrives at a beach resort town that has a significant slum part, and while it would be easy for Nina to magically clean it better and hand out free meals, that won’t solve the underlying problem, which is capitalism. Besides, Nina is also dealing with larger issues. As we see in the second story in this book, she’s got a bit of PTSD.

This is an ongoing narrative, but the book can also be divided fairly easily into four parts. 1) Nina goes to thank the merchants responsible for helping her with the preservative issue at the end of Book 1, only to find they’re going under because of corporate espionage and also their manager is a love-besotted dimwit; 2) Their search for Tien’s parents leads then to a mercenary company that supposedly has lapalunes in their huge mansion… but won’t let them be seen; 3) The beach resort plot I mentioned above; and 4) Nina is accosted by both a noble who wants to make her his “third wife”, and his chief maid, who recognizes Nina has been trained by a “drunken psychopath” (Nina does not deny this), and demands that they have a maid battle! Meanwhile, Nina is finding it harder and harder to hide from whose who want to find her.

There are two really strong parts of this novel. (The weak part is the first story, which needs to rely on everyone being either incredibly dumb or incredibly forgiving or both.) The first is at the end of the second story, where Nina is set up in exactly the same way that she was at the start of the series, and accused of theft. This causes her to come close to a complete nervous breakdown, and I think if Tien hadn’t yoinked her away from there ASAP she would have. Nina tends to think of herself as a maid and has little sense of self, and they need to do something about that or this is going to come up again. The other is at the end of the maid competition, where the other maid claims victory by doing things the fastest, but Nina genuinely wins because she knows being a maid is not about laundry or cooking or errands, it’s about people and how to make their life better. You are a maid, not a robot or a slave.

The book ends with the party being summoned to the Empress, and I suspect there’s only so long that they can avoid having to deal with the main problem of this series: Nina is too valuable to be allowed to happily live her life adventuring with friends. She needs to be chained down somewhere and forced to be brilliant for the state. I look forward to seeing how the author gets out of this bind.

The Twelve Kingdoms, Book Four: Sea God in the East, Vast Sea in the West

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By Fuyumi Ono and Akihiro Yamada. Released in Japan as “Juni Kokuki: Higashi no Wadatsumi, Nishi no Sōkai” by X Bunko White Heart. Released in North America by Seven Seas Entertainment. Translated by Kim Morrissy. Adapted by Monica Sullivan.

Everyone loves a good scoundrel who’s secretly smart and caring. They’re a very popular fictional trope. The scoundrel – almost always male, as in this book, though I have seen excellent scoundrel heroines as well – is the sort that always looks like they’re a good for nothing. They drink a lot, they don’t dress or stand properly, they’re always hanging out in the bad parts of town rather than, y’know, ruling the country. It’s always fun to read about how everyone gradually realizes that it was all part of a clever plan, and that in reality everything they’ve been doing had a very good reason. Note that I said it was fun to READ about. As it turns out, when the previous king was renowned for being awful, your kingdom is on the verge of collapsing, and you’re only just starting to recover. having a king who never goes to meetings and is hanging out in brothels can, in fact, be bad.

We’ve met the king of En and his kirin before, helping Youko establish herself and her own kingdom, and later on Taiki needing to choose a new ruler, but it’s clear in those that he’s well-established. Here we go back a bit and see what things were like when he was just getting started. The previous king was a tyrant who nearly destroyed the kingdom, and the land was arid and inhospitable. Twenty years later, the land is starting to recover and the domains that make up the kingdom are beginning to find their feet. But it’s a struggle, and things are not helped by the new king, Shouryuu, who seems to want to fire his most loyal subjects and replace them with people who dislike him. The king, as I noted above, avoids meetings and likes to hang out in brothels. As such, it’s not a surprise when the chancellor of the most prosperous domain decides to have the king step down and let him take over.

As always with this book, the writing is stellar and I barely know where to begin. Shouryuu *is* thinking about the kingdom, and wants to try to get by with the least amount of lives lost. Particularly as his kirin is so sensitive to blood and death. That said, it is interesting that this book pushes back against the idea of kings ruling in the way they do, especially given that this is a world with real gods who have kings chosen by what amounts to people with magical ruler sense. In a normal fantasy universe, there might be a much better argument against Shouryuu’s rule, but here the world is literally set up to show he’s the one they need – which turns out to be true, the guy starting the rebellion is a complete loser who you get to hate. Imagine Tenya from My Hero Academia, only evil. I will also warn you that there *is* bloodshed here, and it’s not the bad guys who die. Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the kid who talks to youma, who turns out to be a far more interesting villain than the other guy, and I hope we see him again.

I hope I don’t need to tell people how good this is and that you should be reading it. Next time, it’s the first of a two-parter where we finally catch up with Youko and see how smoothly things have gone for her. (My guess: not very.)