Category Archives: reviews

Maiden of the Needle, Vol. 1

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By Zeroki and Miho Takeoka. Released in Japan as “Hariko no Otome” by Kadokawa Shoten. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Kiki Piatkowska.

This book’s plot and characters have a familiar feel, to the point where the biggest surprise I had in the first volume is that the male love interest has a goatee. So permit me to talk about one of my pet problems with light novels in general, which is that the writers don’t feel content to have antagonists be bad people, they’ve got to be THE WORST PEOPLE EVER. Sure, you could have a simple parent who favors one daughter over the other and just, y’know, frowns when she walks by, but why do that when they can starve her to death, lock her in a room, not teach her anything (which is an issue given the heroine is inevitably a reincarnation from Japan), etc? Oh yes, and let’s make them incompetent as well. And secretly housing possible terror weapons? Hell, even the heroine’s Japanese family was awful. Of course, this means you don’t have to worry when they’re all inevitably executed. Serves them right! Easy peasy.

In Japan, Tsumugi was dealing with an abusive father, a cowed mother, and her joy was hanging out with friends. Then she dies (I assume from the traditional traffic accident) and she is reincarnated as Yui. In this world, which is the traditional sort of fantasy kingdom, her family is supposed to have a special power to weave protective magic. Unfortunately, they’ve fallen on hard times, possibly as they’re all evil (see above), and the first fifteen years of her life are a living hell. Then she’s sold to another merchant for a large sum and, once given adequate food, water, and actual explanations about how things work, turns out to not only be a prodigy but close to a goddess, with her powers being able to heal fairies (the main source of magic here) and also cure fashion faux pas. But will she survive long enough to be acknowledged?

Yui is probably the reason I enjoyed this more than it possibly deserved. She’s a character that has to walk a fine line. She is definitely still suffering the effects of her abuse – even after proper food and water, she still looks thin and years younger than she is, and she has trouble speaking through the entire book, with extended conversations leading to coughing fits simply due to her never speaking before this. But she’s relatively matter of fact about things, not being too excited or too depressed. The book does not have much time to devote to her suffering in any case, as this is 100% the story of Yui being amazing and everyone praising her for being amazing. It’s fairly charming, and never annoyed me the way I’d expect, but this is a book you should only read if you love Cinderella stories, and it definitely has a lot of light novel cliches. In addition to the abusive family, we also get the shy but large-breasted knight, and the maid who loves cute things (including our heroine).

This could easily have ended in one book, but there is apparently a second, as Yui needs to power up so that, when she cuts off ties with her family, she isn’t cursed. I’ll probably pick it up.

How to Win Her Heart on the Nth Try

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By Ichine Kamijo and Yu Shiroya. Released in Japan as “n-kaime no Koi no Musubikata” by Kadokawa Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Judy Jordan.

Years ago, in the pre-light novel days, it always seemed that manga brought over to English speakers was written purely for teenagers in middle school and high school, and the romances all revolved around school clubs and walking home after practice. I would wish that for once, just for once, we could get a romance about grownups, in real jobs, and dealing with grownup concerns. So! I have good news and bad news. The good news is that this is definitely a book for and about grownups, with grownup concerns, and they have white-collar office jobs. The bad news: if you, the reader, work in a white-collar office job, be aware that this book will hammer on your anxieties and fears for 250 pages until you want to shriek. Every “you or your subordinate screwed up, please come to the manager’s office at once” nightmare is seen here, right down to having your laptop stolen. Fortunately, this book is written for exhausted workaholic women, and so there’s a guy who can come to the rescue.

Nagi is a systems engineer with a tragic past, working at a smallish company owned by her uncle. She has two juniors, and her entire life seems to run on stress and last-minute deadlines. There’s certainly no time for romance. That said, she also has Keigo, a childhood friend who works in the same company. He’s a great guy. And a good friend. On Keigo’s end, he’s been trying for the last fifteen years to subtly convey to the oblivious Nagi that he loves her, and none of it has stuck. And in a high stress office like theirs, the question is not “when will these two finally realize that they’re a couple?”, but “can they get together as a couple before they either die of overwork or end up having to take the fall for some disaster that seems to constantly be happening?”.

I can definitely see this book’s appeal to women, with the core not being “I just need a man who can understand me” but “I just need a man who can finish all my work for me”. Both hero and heroine are flawed people with very real hangups that prevent this from easily resolving, and even after getting together we see things aren’t smooth sailing. The most interesting part of the book was probably Nagi’s junior Saotome, who is small and cute, which gets her a lot of attention. This is unwanted attention, because she’s in love with Nagi. She and Keigo don’t get on, of course, but eventually manage to work things out. Other than that, I will again note that this book can make for uncomfortable romance reading. You keep waiting for Nagi to be fired for some reason or another, or have bad things happen to her. It’s definitely showing me I could never make it in Japanese office culture.

So if you want a workplace romance, and don’t mind that the male lead tends to swoop in to save the day a lot, this is pretty good.

A Pale Moon Reverie, Vol. 1

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By Kuji Furumiya and Teruko Arai. Released in Japan as “Tsuki no Shirosa o Shirite Madoromu” by DRE Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Jason Li.

This is definitely one of those series where you can sell it to others by simply saying who wrote it. For the right reader, “from the same author as Unnamed Memory” is quite the draw, and this series has a lot of the same strengths that made Unnamed Memory such a compelling work. Most notably that it feels like a “normal” fantasy work, rather than one filtered through Japanese light novels and webnovels. It’s refreshing these days to read books without stats, adventurer’s guilds, and the rest. This series is creating its own world, thank you very much, and the world is quite compelling. The two leads will also seem very familiar to those who’ve read Unnamed Memory, though they both lack the experience and maturity of Oscar and Tinasha. And, of course, there’s also the prose, which is excellent (and well translated). This is a book to curl up in a chair and take your time reading (and you’ll have to, it’s a long one).

Xixu is a shadeslayer, trained to seek out shades (basically evil ghosts) and destroy them. He’s very good at his job, but is overly serious and dour. He’s sent by the king (at the behest of the king’s seer) to Irede, a legendary city devoted to wine, women and song… literally. While there, he’s introduced to Sarida, the proprietress of the Pale Moon, a courtesan house with very strict rules – the courtesans pick their customers, not the other way around. Sari is only sixteen, and (as it turns out) has not yet chosen any customers, but she has other things that concern her, mainly that she has supernatural powers that can aide shadeslayers in binding the shades to make them easier to get rid of. As the book goes on, Xixu and Sari find themselves growing far closer to each other than they’d expected.

As with Unnamed Memory, this is basically an omnibus of two volumes that could have easily sold as normal 200-page books, but the author seems to like doorstoppers. Xixu is a good male lead, being dedicated and humorless but also caring and perceptive. Sari is more complicated, partly due to reasons I won’t spoil, but she’s also the one who tends to get in trouble a lot – she’s not quite a damsel in distress, don’t get me wrong, but when the climax of the book is about to happen you will find her at the center being restrained by the bad guys. As for the rest of the cast, I was a bit disappointed that the traitor in the first book was the obvious choice, though at least there was some attempt to throw us off the trail for a bit. I also very much like the idea of a courtesan house where the first rule is consent. But mostly I loved the worldbuilding and the writing. It’s the reason to read this.

This came from a webnovel, which is finished online, but we all know that doesn’t necessarily mean anything to publishers. Still, I hope it does well for Drecom, as I love this author and want to read more of this odd but endearing couple.