Category Archives: reviews

A Tale of the Secret Saint ZERO, Vol. 2

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By Touya and chibi. Released in Japan as “Tensei Sita Daiseijyo ha, Seijyo Dearuko Towohitakakusu ZERO” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Kim Morrissy. Adapted by Melanie Kardas.

One thing I’ve noticed about several light novels series that feature things that are supposed to be cute is that they can get surprisingly dark, at least at the start. I’ve talked before about Kuma Bear and its tendency towards horrific backstories filled with rape and murder for some characters, which we basically never get anymore. And, in the main series that this is a spinoff of, we get how Serafina died, and it also features rape and torture. That too, as the books went on, has been, if not removed, at least rarely mentioned unless it’s very plot-relevant. And the first novel in this spinoff was firmly on the site of cute and adorable, so I was expecting the same thing here. Imagine my surprise when I got another character with a tragic backstory that reads very much like a horror novel. Monsters exist here, and it turns out that they can lead to fates much worse than death.

Serafina is out and about now that she can see, and she’s shown off her cook saint powers to Sirius. So it’s time for her to work with him in earnest, and that also means she needs a cohort of knights to guard her. What’s surprising to everyone but the reader, who knows that Sirius is absolutely obsessed with Serafina, is that the knights chosen are the best of the best, cream of the crop… and they’re wondering why the second princess needs so much more protection than, say, the FIRST princess. That said, she is pretty freaking adorable… and the “special medicine” she makes to cure Canopus’ fever works a bit TOO well. Clearly there’s only one thing left to do: go the the beach. Which, to be fair, also involves a bit of investigation, as this beachside community has been in an economic slump recently. It’s almost as if the spirit who blessed them is dying…

This is, out of necessity, a series where our heroine is six years old, so it lacks any of the romance that the main series hints at. Sure, Sirius is obsessed with Serafina, but that’s meant to be more of a dad/older brother thing, and honestly, she’s more his emotional crutch than he is hers. I did briefly wonder, though, if one of the guards was going to have a childhood friend romance with one of the saints, who turns out to be from his own hometown. Unfortunately, this isn’t a romance, and the guards only get to be as obsessed with Serafina as a powerful saint as Sirius is. Instead, the childhood friend’s plotline is a reminder of the dangers of feeling responsible for things you do as a kid that aren’t really your fault – easy enough to do here, when it turns out the things are so horrifying. (I was honestly a bit annoyed at the girl here. “I know you feel bad about your whole family being murdered, but did you know their souls may also be trapped in torment?”)

So overall, this was quite good, concentrating on the cuteness while also leaving in some darkness for those who like the contrast. It does have a dangling plotline, though, I hope that gets resolved whenever the third volume is out. We’ll get the main series first, though.

From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordsman: My Hotshot Disciples Are All Grown Up Now, and They Won’t Leave Me Alone, Vol. 6

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By Shigeru Sagazaki and Tetsuhiro Nabeshima. Released in Japan as “Katainaka no Ossan, Kensei ni Naru: Tada no Inaka no Kenjutsu Shihan Datta noni, Taisei Shita Deshitachi ga Ore o Hōttekurenai Ken” by SQEX Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Hikoki.

This is getting an anime pretty soon (in two days, in fact), so it’s interesting to see this volume coming out right before it, as it’s essentially starting a new arc for the series. The last volume brought to a close a lot of Beryl’s issues with his dad, and he’s now come to the conclusion that hey, maybe he *is* pretty strong after all. That said, baby steps. He still struggles with his self-deprecation coming to him automatically through this book. And in regards to his quest for a wife, he’s going to have to get past the “no one could possibly find an old geezer like me attractive” stage to get anywhere. He also straight up says that he’s not going to have any of his former students as bridal candidates, which is essentially EVERYONE to date. So it’s unsurprising that we get a new girl introduced here to offer an alternative.

After dropping by the magical academy to see how the sword magic classes are going, Beryl is called into Allucia’s office. They have to go to the estate of Margrave Flumvelk, who is holding a gathering to celebrate Beryl’s accomplishments to date. Beryl is understandably his usual self about this, but he also knows he can’t refuse a request for a noble, so he, Allucia, and a bunch of knights spend a couple weeks traveling out there. When he arrives, he finds that the margrave is one of his old students, and Allucia’s classmate. He also has a younger sister, Shueste, who he wants to have at Beryl’s side in order to fend off nobility who have designs on Beryl, is gorgeous and clever, and pairs really nicely with Beryl… much to the annoyance of Allucia.

This book is OK, but I have some issues. All the action and drama is backloaded into the last 4th, making it feel like the author had a different ending and was told to change it. We’re introduced to two knights to guard Beryl and Allucia, and one is almost killed, but they both have zero personality between the two of them. They cried out for a side story. More to the point, they do address the elephant in the room here, which is Beryl marrying someone. Warren, the margrave, admits to Allucia that he’d be happy with Beryl marrying his sister… but would also be fine with Beryl marrying Allucia. The key is that Beryl is getting older, and they want someone to carry on the line. I’m not fond of “my awesome sword abilities are genetic” stories, even though, in a world with magic like this, it may be entirely possible. Then again, merely getting Beryl to have sexual desires may be too big a hurdle.

So now we have a whole new subplot with new villains to dig into. The next book promises to finally bring back the adventurer who was one of the harem in Book 1 and then vanished. We’ll see if the anime can bump it up a bit as well.

Victoria of Many Faces, Vol. 2

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By Syuu and Nanna Fujimi. Released in Japan as “Tefuda ga Ōme no Victoria” by MF Books. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andria McKnight.

The first volume of this series felt very self-contained, but left open the possibility of a sequel hook for the second book. A sequel hook that remains open, because it’s not used here. Instead, this book takes place five years later, with Victoria, Jeffrey and Nonna returning from fantasy China, and is content to do much the same thing the first one did. It divides its time nicely between Victoria having slice-of-live vignettes around the city, reconnecting with the cast of the first book, and raising her daughter to be a wonderful noble girl. This is contrasted with the other half of the book, which is Victoria as spy: she can’t help but decode an ancient book, which reveals the location of a hidden secret, and she’s attacked about five different times in this book, all of the attacks very unsuccessful – she’s not even injured. But the most important part of this book is seeing how Victoria has raised her daughter to be a lovely bundle of terror.

As noted above, Victoria and her family are back in Ashbury, five years after the first book. Nonna is now twelve years old, and has spent the last five years learning Shenese martial arts, which now take up most of her time – when she hears she’s going to be reuniting with Clark, she’s far more interested in showing off her cool kung-fu moves than to talk to a boy who has now grown into a man (with a clear crush on a twelve-year-old – I’ll ignore that for the moment given that in Book 1 he was 12 and she was 6 and it was more cute). She also meets back up with Mr. Bernard, who shows her a rare copy of The Lost Crown a famous adventurer story. This one seems to have some odd typography, and Victoria and Bernard wonder if it’s actually a cipher. This mystery leads to further mysteries which take up the back half of the book.

The best selling point of the book is how matter of fact it is – both Victoria and Nonna are absolutely deadly in a fight, and neither of them are remotely challenged by any of the thugs who attack them in this volume. What’s more, the only real criticism of her daughter following her into a deadly situation and taking out all the thugs with her mother is that she was acting a little too chuuni when she did it. Honestly, the matter of factness even extends to one of the subplots, where the reader (and Nonna to, to be fair) keeps expecting Victoria or her family to win over the heart of the plucky foreign teen they rescued from her country’s outskirts, but we find that in fact the plucky foreign teen is in fact a crook who falls in with a bad crowd and is not in fact redeemed by the power of good thoughts. Sometimes you can’t really do anything about that.

As with the first book, this one ends feeling like it’s the end of the series, but there’s a third in the series out in Japan, so we/’ll see if someone can actually break through the defensive badassery of mother and daughter. This is still a great series.