Category Archives: reviews

An Unruly Summon, Vol. 1

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By Cathfach and Kurodeko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club.

This was one of the winners of the J-Novel Club original light novel contest, where they had judges (including Carlo Zen, author of The Saga of Tanya the Evil) picking out who created the best work. The winners got a cash prize, publication, and illustrations by a Japanese light novel artist (in this case, the Lady Bumpkin and Her Lord Villain artist). The premise of this story interested me, as it looked like it might be a deconstruction of the standard isekai. Which it is, but not as much as you’d expect. Honestly, this has its roots in those old fanfics where the author wrote the story asking “what if everything were the same except the main character was sensible and asked questions?” Thomas, the main character of this story, is sensible and definitely does ask questions, but that only gets him so far, because this is a world that has been at war for a while, and has summoned heroes before, and they are not happy they have to do it again. So they try to rig the game in their favor. This goes badly for almost everyone.

Thomas Smith is walking drunkenly back to his apartment with his friend Simon when he spots a purple “whirlwind” in front of him. On touching it, he ends up in another world. There, he is told that the world is under threat from demons who are on the verge of destroying humanity, and he has the power to help them fight back. He’s also assigned four pretty women – Stephanie, the King’s daughter; Christine, a knight; Wendy, a mage; and Mary, a slave. As he learns about magic and swordplay, and discovers that, much to his surprise, he really does seem to have heroic abilities, he also starts to connect the dots that they’re lying to him. In fact, the reader knows this from the start. Previous heroic summonings haven’t always gone well (and, in a nice meta joke, tend to be Japanese teenagers), so they gave him a “harem” and are trying to get him to be their good little puppet. The more he learns, however, the more everything completely goes off the rails.

This is a solid book, which wants to play around in the isekai sandbox but also try to examine some of its cliches. Slavery is examined closely here, and it’s horrifying in many ways. About 40% of the way into the book, we get a HOLY CRAP moment, and you wonder if that’s going to help solve the slavery thing, but that ends up not really being the case. Because this is a world where no one really understands how magic works. A lot of it is just “because it’s magic”. And Thomas finds that the success and failure of his spells lean a lot on his feelings towards others – even if they’re unconscious. Which means if he is unconsciously blaming others for their past horrible actions, even if he wants to save him the magic can simply not work. The world is also just starting to show off its complexity – it’s clearly meant to be multiple volumes, though I’m not sure how ongoing series work when it’s a contest winner. Possibly depends on sales.

I will admit, the character I most want to see more of in future books is the one who only appeared on the last page. So I would like to see more of this. For fans of isekai who want dark!gray!independent heroes.

Breathless Time Traveler

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By Yuyuko Takemiya and Tsubasa Yamaguchi. Released in Japan as “Anata wa Koko de, Iki ga dekiru no?” by Shincho Bunko nex. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Alexandra Owen-Burns.

I must admit, in general I tend not too look too closely at Seven Seas’ one-volume light novels that they turn out quite a bit of, mostly as they tend to all look like they’re going to be “bittersweet, possibly tragic love story”. But this one they hooked me in on, because it’s by the author of Toradora!, a series I quite enjoy. Having read it, I found it well-written and compelling, despite the fact that, as I expected, it is exactly the genre that I said above. But that’s not all it is. This falls into the category of one of those books where you’re trying to figure out the plot, and you’re also trying to figure out if the characters are telling us the truth. And oh yes, it’s a time loop story, so we also have to pay attention to which timeline we might be in right now. It’s a bit of a mess. Kind of like our heroine.

We meet our heroine, Rara, dying on the side of the road after a fatal motorcycle accident. She’s able to give us an awful lot of first-person narration, despite an awful lot of grotesque imagery. (Folks bothered by motor vehicle accidents and their aftermath may want to skip this book). Oddly, we also see her sitting at a television, watching as an alien come to Earth announces that the world is going to end soon… and the alien is then killed. The same alien shows up in front of the dying Rara and explains that this world is created by her, and that she is the only one who can save it. She then finds herself back in time, at the point where she meets her lover. The alien is trying to get her to avoid this guy, or break up with him, or otherwise do something different so that she avoids dying in the accident. She, however, keeps doing the exact same thing. After all, she loves him.

So yeah, a little weird. Rara can be a bit dislikable at the start of the book, when she’s a furious teen ranting at (and seeking the approval of) her overly logical and punctilious mother. And as the book went on, I guessed one of the mysteries fairly quickly. But figuring things out is not really the reason to read this. This is a book about the joys of being in love, and that sometimes, when you’re deeply in love, you care about your partner a lot more than yourself. The title comes from Rara’s constant question to Kengo, “can you breathe? Are you breathing?”, which is connected to the fatal accident but also makes a very good metaphor for the stress of everyday life, and how everything can just be far too much. You can’t move forward or accept things. You stop breathing. In the end, Rara is able to get the happy ending she wants, but to do that, she has to accept that this happy ending is not going to involve her. And that’s fine. The one she loves is happy.

This was a bit depressing, out of necessity, but also had some very evocative imagery. I’m glad I read it.

A Late-Start Tamer’s Laid-Back Life, Vol. 13

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By Yuu Tanaka and Nardack. Released in Japan as “Deokure Tamer no Sono Higurashi” by GC Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by A.M. Cola.

Those readers who dislike the frequently seen characterization of a lead as “seems completely unaware of how good/loved/savvy he really is” will have, I assume, dropped this series after the first volume, since that’s entirely what it runs on. Even those of us who enjoy that sort of thing, though, may find this volume trying. We do get the usual share of Yuto trying various recipes and accidentally inventing something amazing, of course, but the back half of this book is taken up with a genuine raid boss fight, which everyone assumes (except Yuto) that he will take part in, and that everyone assumes (except Yuto) that he and his tamed monsters did the most to help win, and then all the NPCs assume (to Yuto’s shock) that he is their leader and the one who they should give all the cool new quests. He will never stop being astonished by this, and he will never stop immediately forgetting it within five minutes.

The first quarter of the book is mostly Yuto puttering around, figuring out you can get medicinal plants when they’ve been trapped in amber, etc. He then meets up with Akari, one of the front-liners he (and we) have not seen for some time. They’re trying to befriend yokai, which you can’t tame per se but you can summon after befriending them. They also (thanks to Yuto’s really high NPC favorability) find a beastgirl who leads them to a village of beastpeople… and a huge, raid-sized monster, which is blocking the way to the sea village they trade with. Realizing that this is likely the way to open the next level that everyone has been searching for, they quickly gather allies and prepare to fight. Though Yuto also makes sure to do those little wandering things he always does, and as such gets all the good info about defeating it.

There’s minimal Alyssa in this book, but that’s mostly a setup for a gag. When Yuto wants to discuss dyeing and miracle herbs, Alyssa is offline, so he goes to someone else in their group, Maple. (No, not that one.) At first she’s fairly blase about what he’s brought, but when she runs across a major find, she quickly explains that he can only speak to Alyssa about this. Sorry, sacrificial meat shield Quick Cat! Only you can overreact to Yuto’s ridiculousness. I was also amused, though a bit annoyed, at Yuto’s anger at the cute couple that’s making eyes at each other while he and Akari are investigating… especially since he’s walking next to a beautiful girl at the time! Yuto is presumable mid-20s, given he’s an a=office worker, and this series is not doing romance, but his occasional “not gay!” or “damn normies” personality quirks seem out of character compared to the rest of him.

So a fairly decent volume of this series, and it gives people what they want. Unless they want Yuto to gain animal traits, he’s said no to that.