By Yanagi and Yoh Hihara. Released in Japan as “Mori no Hashikko no Chibi Majo-san” by TO Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Nathan Macklem.

There’s a famous early episode of M*A*S*H where Hawkeye tries to save a patient but fails, and is despondent about it. Henry Blake, in a rare serious turn, says that the first thing he learned in the war was two rules. Rule #1: Young men die. Rule #2: Doctors can’t change Rule #1. This third volume of Tiny Witch is very much about teaching Misha that lesson, as she goes through all the worst things a doctor – sorry, apothecary – can go through. There’s a pandemic that she finds near impossible to solve, people blame her for it and even attack her at one point, and even once she helps to find an answer, some people still die from it and her relationship with the survivors will never be the same. Being an apothecary is not just handing out magic medicine that makes everyone better. Sometimes people die. Misha does learn this lesson, but there are a lot of tears and breakdowns afoot here.

Misha is having a lot of fun at the Kingdom of Redford. She’s helped the princess regain some of her health, she’s made friends with the local children, and she even gets to walk around a town festival. Unfortunately, then those same kids come to tell her that one of them is sick. Along with her grandmother. And the sickness turns out to be very familiar – it’s the plague that almost destroyed the kingdom a generation ago. Now she has to try to solve what others couldn’t before, and without any other help… or so she thinks, but fortunately, some allies arrive to remind her that while the elves (cough) sorry, People of the Forest are loners who tend not to get involved in other people’s business, they will actually help her if she needs help. Even more fortunately, friends she made along the way in the first book turn out to be more valuable than she thought.

This is very much both a “Misha grows up” volume and also a reminder that Misha is not grown up yet, and also has had a lot of trauma in the past. As it turns out, and I’m sure this won’t become relevant in a later book, the woman who set up the death of Misha’s mother, who was confined to an asylum, has escaped. Her friend tries to ask if it’s OK to tell her the information, but the mere reminder of the incident sends Misha into a panic attack. Because she’s good at remaining outwardly nice and friendly, it’s hard to tell sometimes how she’s barely holding it together, and the plague absolutely does not help. By the end of the book, she’s the definition of sadder but wiser, especially with the children she made friends with, who now see her and can’t help but think “she promised to save my granny but did not”. Misha, think of those you did save as well.

The end of this book suggests that we will spend the next several books stuck in the People of the Forest’s closed-off village, and I am 100% sure that’s not going to happen, so it will be interesting to see how that gets derailed. Till then, this is a very solid fantasy.

By Yanagi and Yoh Hihara. Released in Japan as “Mori no Hashikko no Chibi Majo-san” by TO Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Nathan Macklem.

Last time I was wondering if this would turn out to be a disgraced noble book in disguise, or a slow life book, or a mystery, and it leaned more on the mystery at the end. This second volume is, till the nasty cliffhanger, a far more relaxed affair. Misha has moved to another kingdom, and for the most part, gets treated like a savior. She responds to this well, by… well, if there is a problem with this kingdom, she is going to solve it, as she takes on princesses with poor health, herb gardens with weak effects, and secret royalty who are kind of tsundere. (She may have more difficulty in the third book – see aforementioned nasty cliffhanger.) But after the trauma of the first book, and while she’s still dealing with her mother’s death, with affects her throughout, this book is all about making Misha happy and content. Everyone loves her.

Misha and her entourage finally arrive at the Kingdom of Redford’s palace, where she greets its king, who was not expected to be king but became one after a combination of a plague – which no one ever really figured out – and various countries trying to take advantage of all the death. He’s a young man who affects a sunny, pleasant personality but is not above using people for his own ends – though he knows before he even meets her that Misha needs to be handled with kid gloves. She makes a great first impression, as it turns out that medicine in this kingdom is not all that great – the idea of a stethoscope astonishes them. That said, can she win over tougher customers, like the King’s sister, who has been ill for most of her life – wait, is she still ill? Are we sure she’s not just spoiled?

I will note that folks who are somewhat tired of the sunshine girl arriving in a new community and magically healing everyone through a combination of niceness and gumption may find this book hard going, as it leans into that cliche pretty hard. Misha does arrive with her elf – sorry, person of the forest – mentor, but she quickly goes away to do other stuff, mostly leaving Misha on her own. The kingdom does its level best to make her happy – sure, you can stay in the gardener’s shed out back instead of our lovely palace, just try not to pay attention to how expensive your “simple” furniture is. I also enjoyed the scenes with Caro, who is suffering from a classic case of child with too many expectations, and finds Misha treating him like the kid he is – complete with the standard “let’s play around with the poor commoner children” scene – a breath of fresh air.

So the first book was somewhat fraught and tragic, and this book was mostly relaxing and happy. There is that cliffhanger, though, and I’m pretty sure the third volume will swing things the other way. For fans of cute girls doing cute medical things.

By Yanagi and Yoh Hihara. Released in Japan as “Mori no Hashikko no Chibi Majo-san” by TO Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Nathan Macklem.

This is an excellent book, which tends to wander around genres, but about a third of the way through I reasoned that it’s a disgraced noble book in disguise. Which the first half almost is, but then once she sets off on her journey to another country that has requested her (also very disgraced noble), it suddenly becomes a slow life feel good sort of book. At its heart is Misha, who is the tiny witch on the cover, and her journey from innocent child to grieving, stricken child (it’s not a spoiler, one of the chapter titles is literally “Sudden Tragedy”) and gradually trying to come to terms with that grief and live on. That said, all of that has to war with the insatiable curiosity that permates everything Misha does, which makes her a great apothecary, but like so many other fictional heroines also makes her prone to stumbling on the mystery of the week, which is the genre this eventually settles on.

Misha is a young girl who lives, as the title might suspect, deep in the woods, where she learns medicine from her mother, who is from a people who specialize in medicine. Her father visits every month or so, and they seem happy, till after a couple of months of no visiting it turns out her father was in a war and is on the verge of death… and is also a duke. So her mother takes Misha and rushes to the castle (where, years earlier, her mother had been severely injured by the duke’s wife) to try to save his life. She does this, but, alas, the wife is still around, so you can probably guess what happens. Worst of all, now that Misha is here she’s bound to get involved in… sigh… politics. Fortunately, she’s not only a terrific apothecary but has the ability to charm anyone who spends more than ten seconds around her.

This is a fantasy, sort of. Misha’s mother comes from a people who really, really made me think of elves but are not actually elves. Late in the book there’s also a dragon god, who acts exactly like you’d expect a dragon god to act in a light novel written for women. But it’s also grounded in the reality of Misha’s entire life being upended and her never really being allowed to stand still. She leaves the woods via horse (she’s never been on one before), has to treat all the wounded soldiers (she has very little hands-on experience), and then she’s sent as a student (she avoids concubine when people figure out who her relatives are) to another country, where she comes across attempted murders, attempted sacrifices, and wolf puppies who she heals through the power of goodness and niceness. No, really, it’s hinted that she literally has some sort of magical calm healing powers. The reason this works is that Misha is written terrifically, never getting too cloying, and remembering the grief that she’s still processing all book.

So, to sum up: this is a winner, and you should go get it.