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Unsung Epics of the Hero’s Journey, Vol. 2

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By Hachigatsumori and Nat. Released in Japan as “Yuusha no Tabi no Uragawa de” by Dre Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by MPT.

In my last review I mentioned that the hero’s party itself barely featured in the book. That changes with this second book, and we get to see what kind of hero’s party they are. And, frankly, it’s very much towards the idealistic end of the spectrum. No one is getting banished from the party with these guys – in fact, we literally see that near the end. The hero is the sort of girl you want to be the hero who saves the world, and she’s got strength and stamina out the wazoo. Sadly, no one really trained her, so she lacks any real experience – which is probably why Rhuys’ prophesies keep showing her dying horribly before she can complete her destiny. Technically Ariagnée, who is demi-human herself, should not really be training the hero on how to kill folks like her should the time come. But alas, the bad guys reckoned without one important fact that this book emphasizes as much as the last: Ariagnée is gay as hell, and will do anything for a cute girl.

Acting on a new vision that says that the hero is going to be ambushed by assassins, Rhuys and Ariagnée try to quickly get ahead of the party to take care of things… and end up running right into them, as noted above. Ariagnée helps Lina (the hero), who is quick to learn but also a bit of a meathead when it comes to combat. Rhuys has an awkward meetup with Agnes, the party’s cleric, who is the protoge of the woman who tried to have Rhuys killed in the first book. There’s also Sierra, a typical “not the hero but very similar” warrior, and a mage who is the only guy in the group. After ditching the party, and having a quick detour at a lake (more on that later), they end up being attacked by assassins… no, not the assassins who are ambushing the hero, another, slightly less good group of assassins. Because it turns out that the hero being chosen by magic fiat upsets folks who dreamed of THEIR hero being chosen.

That detour I mentioned is basically a maguffin that allows our two heroines to come to terms with their past. They meet a guy who is trying to find an artifact that lets you talk to the dead… which gets pretty dark when you hear why she died. But then Ariagnée uses it to talk with her mother, who is rather blasé about being dead, and encourages her. Rhuys has to rely on a DIFFERENT maguffin, but also gets a bit of closure that hopefully makes her a lot less death seeking than the first book, in that it turns out only half her family didn’t care about her at all. This may be an adventure series with yuri subtext, but the world they’re in is dark, and there’s a lot of corpses stacking up, particularly towards the end. Rhuys may keep seeing vision of the hero dying, but when merchant Utile (who, by the way, looks EXACTLY like Richeh from Witch Hat Atelier) asks Rhuys to make sure Ariagnée stays safe, we nod along. Please protect Ariagnée from the narrative.

There’s no third volume of this yet, but Drecom tends to wrap series up fast rather than cancelling them unfinished, so I’m sure one will pop up. If you like subverting the hero’s journey, or just a lot of gay women (there’s at least three, and I’m prepared to go up to seven if I have to) this is a good read.

The Villainess Speaks Not: The Black Pawn and The Summoned Heteromorphs

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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.

Fired? But I Maintain All the Software!, Vol. 2

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By Yuki Kashirome and icchi. Released in Japan as “E, Shanai System Subete One Operation Shite Iru Watashi o Kaiko desu ka?” by PASH! Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Minna Lin.

Content warning: This review will be discussing a book that deals with multiple companies that use AI, and it discusses AI throughout the book, usually in a positive way (though it does emphasize AI without humans making decisions is a disaster). Reader discretion is advised.

The second volume of this series tries to figure out what to do next, as (the author admits this) it was written as a one-shot with no real idea where to go next. As it turns out, while there’s still a lot of discussion of startup companies and AI, for the most part the series turns into Ai being a counselor and solving the mental blocks and traumas of young women. If you asked Ai, of course, she’s not particularly thinking of herself as a counselor, but that is de facto what’s happening here. We also get an introduction of a new regular, who looks so much like Megumin from KonoSuba that the book outright admits it. Oh, and we also meet a younger sister who’s tall, smart, and also indebted to Ai. The series may not be yuri per se, but Ai can’t help but draw cute girls into the fold.

As with the first book, the cover art is the first moment of the volume, as Ai gets up, still in pajamas, turns on the TV, and sees her old boss doing a press conference in cosplay. She doesn’t have time to boggle at this too much, as her company has a problem – because Ken was unprepared for Ai’s brilliance, they had to sell the Smart Frames – including the rights. As a result, Ken takes most of the book off to level up, so to speak. As for Ai, she realizes she doesn’t have a dream like most everyone else she talks to, and decides to talk with the handsome, rich, brilliant CEO she met in the last book. He immediately tries to headhunt her, but reckons without her oddly low self-image. He then directs her to a similar problem genius – Megumi Yamada, whose combination of intellect that skirts around being labeled autistic and deep past trauma and grief have left her something of a basket case – but a brilliant one. After this, Ai then meets Tsubasa’s younger sister, who has a dream she can’t fulfill and has grown jaded and weary of life. She’s also a complete genius, by the way.

A lot of the solution here seems to be “fight genius with genius”. Yes, Ai takes Megumi to a hot springs and forces her to do things like sleep, but what really fixes things is that Ai is clever enough to rapidly catch on to what Megumi is doing and make suggestions to fix the one thing that was missing. As a result, not only do they have a brilliant new product, but they have a new employee, as Megumi now wants to be at Ai’s side at all times. As for Arisa, I did come up with the technical answer for how her issues were going to be dealt with, but I was thrown off by the extended description of a sports anime that also helped wear her down and reminded her why she liked basketball so much. The solution actually combined the technology from both Ai and Megumi, making it thematically appropriate, too.

The big flaw with this series, of course, is that it’s so ridiculously idealistic it squeaks. Ai is essentially an isekai’d guy with a sword and a harem, only the sword is her computational brilliance. That said, in a genre overflowing with guys with swords, that can easily be good enough.