By Nozomu Mochitsuki and Gilse. Released in Japan as “Tearmoon Teikoku Monogatari” by TO Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Madeleine Willette.

We’re now seventeen books into this series, short story collections aside, and Mia has gotten very good at actual princess things. Sure, she sometimes faces death from things like assassins (as in this book, where we get to see something rare in fictional works, armor actually doing its job in a realistic way), but for the most part, Mia is no longer in any danger of the world turning against her and getting guillotined. As such, Mia has to face an even more dangerous fate, and one that so far she has been very bad at stopping: people in the future thinking TOO highly of her. Mia wants to be a good Empress and avoid execution, she does not want to be worshiped as a God. And when the suggestion of a giant golden statue of her hits her ears, she naturally tries to do everything possible in this book to transfer praise and worthy deeds to others and avoid doing everything herself. Which… works somewhat, but it’s still a C+ overall.

We pick up where we left off last time, with Princess Orania accused of trying to assassinate her father, and then escaping. Now Mia is trying to do damage control, which involves talking with the King (doesn’t help much), getting an in with the merchants (works much better), and meeting with the nation’s Parliament, where she lays out a way that “stop treating your underclass like crap” can work for them (even better). Unfortunately, this does not stop the rest of the plot, which involves escaping, getting captured, cool sword battles, escaping again, getting captured again, and everything ending at a lighthouse, which Mia desperately wants to avoid as it’s where the future suggests her golden statue is put! Does Mia have enough allies and enough power of speechifying to save the day?

This can be a very idealistic series, but at its core is a very dark and bitter future, and even now that we’ve mostly escaped that future we still see where it came from. The actual conspirator behind everything turns out to be so indoctrinated by the serpents that talking to them isn’t going to work, and in the end, despite our getting the backstory behind Orania’s father, the “does not really care about his daughter” part is mostly present and correct – more to the point, he doesn’t care about anything except his past love. There’s no “I was doing tough love in order to save you”, which I was expecting. I do appreciate that Orania is able to get past this and use it to be stronger. Using Mia as a guide, as Mia again does very well here, narrator and gorging on sweets aside. (There’s some fat-shaming again, I fear I will never be entirely rid of that.) The idealism comes in Mia’s speech, where she rails against the pointlessness of revenge and inspires everyone to work harder for the future of their children. The narrator did not talk about people misinterpreting Mia at all in this volume – they interpret her just fine.

Presumably, then, the next volume will start a new arc. I’m not sure how long this series plans to run, but I’ll always happily read more.

By Nozomu Mochitsuki and Gilse. Released in Japan as “Tearmoon Teikoku Monogatari” by TO Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Madeleine Willette.

It’s honestly rather surprising that we haven’t had one of these yet for Tearmoon Empire. Other light novel series are very fond of their .5 volumes or added bonus story collections – hell, Spy Classroom almost has more short story collections than regular volumes. But Tearmoon Empire has pretty much been too busy with Mia trying to save history and make it so she’s not guillotined, poisoned, or does not otherwise live to see her grandchild grow up. As a result, we not only have this collection, which seems to go up to about the 9th or 10th book in the series in terms of the timeline, but there’s a second already out in Japan. I’m not certain if they’re bookstore exclusive-type short stories or if they’re written for this volume. One thing is for sure, though, which is that while Tearmoon Empire is hilarious, and also a thriller, and sometimes a mystery, one of the things it does best is show off that doing good things, and paying it forward, makes everyone happier.

There are too many short stories here to give a breakdown as I sometimes do. I will therefore note some of my favorites, starting with the wraparound plot. Empress Mia, now a grandmother, is having trouble sleeping because her husband Abel is away visiting Sion, no doubt for another sword battle. As it turns out, Bel is also awake, mostly so she can get into mischief. To prevent this, Mia starts telling Bel old stories from back in her teenage years, i.e. around Book 1-10. Anne later shows up, and the whole vibe of these sections is just so nice to see. Seeing Mia at rest, having accomplished what she set out to do, and everyone else living their best lives, just puts a big silly grin on your face. I also loved the glimpses into Mia’s mother, and how this passes down into the wedding dress she shows her father before she marries Abel.

There’s also another ongoing plotline throughout this, which has to do with how Mia’s story is being retold. I’ve talked before about who I think the identity of the snarky narrator of this series is, and while we don’t delve into that we do get two other strands of the story escaping from the bounds of reality. Mia and company go to see a theater group putting on a “fictional” play that seems a little too real to Mia… it’s her life, right down to the time travel! The writer seems to get divine inspiration, rather than it being sinister, but I did love Mia wondering when she’ll tell Abel the truth about herself, as she knows she’ll have to one day. The other subplot shows Mia trying to stop everyone overselling her accomplishments – Elise’s history books have Mia literally flying, something that causes the actual Mia to cringe in embarrassment. She reassures herself that everyone will realize it’s exaggerated. That does not, in fact, happen. Sorry, Mia, you’re just that amazing to everyone. Even Ludwig. (The fountain pen gift, and how Mia makes him accept it, was also brilliant.)

Basically, these stories put a smile on your face and a song in your heart. Now let’s get back to the main plot, as if Mia is killed off in Book 17 all this may be irrelevant.

By Nozomu Mochitsuki and Gilse. Released in Japan as “Tearmoon Teikoku Monogatari” by TO Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Madeleine Willette.

It’s been a long time since the last volume of Tearmoon Empire, so it feels good that this volume was a lot of “here’s what you remember best about the series”. Lots of snarky narrator, lots of Mia thinking of a selfish reason to do something only for everyone around her to take it as the noblest reason ever (even when she literally says “I do things for myself”). Some lovey dovey stuff with her and Abel. And of course the ongoing plot, which is… erm, let me check my notes… or right, Princess Orania, who seems to only care about fishing, and Mia’s attempts to befriend the hell out of her. Which naturally end up interacting with her kingdom, a civil war, preventing another terrible future, and those pesky Chaos Serpents. Though honestly, to the Chaos Serpents, Mia is proving to be even more pesky, and they’re rather annoyed that she keeps showing up right before they enact their evil plans. It’s almost as if she has a book that can see the future.

Tearmoon Empire plays in the larger ocean of both villainess books and time travel to fix the future books, so it’s not a surprise that Orania’s tragic backstory may ring a bell to fans of those books. When you’re in a political marriage but only one of you is actually in love, life can be difficult, and naturally that can mean projecting all your hopes and dreams onto your child. Fortunately, sometimes your husband takes pity on you and gets you another husband who loves you! And you can have children out of love and live happily now! Hrm? Your first daughter? Meh. Whatever. As you can imagine, this has pretty much broken Orania, whose father is of the opinion that she can do whatever, he doesn’t care. Well, until the cliffhanger ending of the book, which promises there’s more behind that… hopefully for the better.

As for Mia herself, she mostly has a pretty good book. Honestly, it’s Rafina who suffers this volume – first because she’s the only girly girl in the entire cast, and thus the only one horrified at the idea of handling the live bait involved in the fishing contest. But also because Mia a) tells her that there’s an active slavery ring going on, something that infuriates Rafina, but b) dealing with it means Mia will be absent from the Holy Eve Festival. Let’s face it, Mia has too many friends, all of whom want to monopolize her time. I’d suggest she find technology to clone herself, but I can only imagine what a disaster that would be. We’re sixteen books in, and it’s getting harder and harder to wrangle everyone together to do a thing. And sometimes she can be completely caught off guard, like with the ending of this volume. Yes, after a couple books that don’t end in the middle of an arc, we’re back to normal here.

Fortunately, we won’t have long till we find out how Mia gets out of thi… hrm? Short Story volume, you say? Ah well.