By Sachi Konzome and Harenochihareta. Released in Japan as “Bakemono Jou Sophie no Salon: Gokigenyou. Kawa Ichimai nara Naosemasu wa” by Mag Garden Novels. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Dawson Chen.

Endings are hard, especially when a book is only two volumes long. Honestly, I think this might have worked better as one big brick, but I can guess why the publisher didn’t want that – these are chunky books as it is. But the main issue is that the first volume was alternating between Sophie and Kurt and their budding love and Sophie essentially having a new customer every chapter with a scar and a story. The second volume also starts out this way, but it almost reads like the author was told to wrap things up, as a little over a third of the way into the book, we end up dealing definitively with Sophie’s skin issues and disfigurement, as well as her self-loathing which is preventing her from accepting Kurt’s love now that he has finally realized what emotions are and that he has them. It’s still a good book, but it feels unbalanced.

The book starts with Sophie still taking care of clients with issues. We meet two kids who claim to be lost princesses but the truth is something far more tragic and well-worn; a clown following in his grandfather’s footsteps who wears his tragedy on his face; a beastman gatekeeper who is struggling to bring up a wayward daughter; and a bartender who is troubled by her past as a pirate. Throughout this we also get Kurt, who is going off to help fight a monstrous dragon, a task so dangerous that he gives Sophie half his dog tags, something you usually only give to your wife or fiancee. She’s very, very worried about him. Then, he returns, with a nasty scar (which she heals of course), and a proposal. She rejects him bitterly due to her condition. Can something be done about that?

The book wears its heart on its sleeve, sometimes a bit too much. Sophie’s cure amounts to finding a doctor who knows what it actually is, and the psychological component of it all, which I was sure might cause her to reject an immediate cure, does not come into play – at least not like that. The little girls’ story is tragic, but also somewhat incomplete – I was expecting the story to circle around to the mother and daughters once more, but it never did. The back half of the book is almost pure fluff – the one cure Sophie administers is to a literal living magical creature that makes people happy. It’s an emotional book, but I wish it had a bit more heft to it. Everything here happens pretty much exactly as you could have guessed. And they all lived happily ever after.

Still, it wasn’t that long, and I enjoyed Sophie essentially collecting tragedies and then upending them. That’s what I’ll remember this series for the most.

By Sachi Konzome and Harenochihareta. Released in Japan as “Bakemono Jou Sophie no Salon: Gokigenyou. Kawa Ichimai nara Naosemasu wa” by Mag Garden Novels. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Dawson Chen.

There have been any number of series about healers in the light novel world, and there is a powerful one in this book as a supporting character. But the reason this book works so well is that Sophie’s healing, the thing that causes her to set up her business, is relatively weak. She can only heal skin deep problems. But skin deep problems are an issue for so many people, and one that is not easily solved, especially in this “magic fantasy” style world. Scars can prevent marriages, can harm familiar relations, can affect someone’s job. And Sophie is someone who can deeply understand that – not just because of her own skin condition, but (yes, surprise, surprise) of her past from Japan, where her daughter suffered from a similar condition. The dignity of everyday life, the little joys of fashion and being attractive, or even just the desire to get the hell away from an abusive stepfamily – all those can be affected by scars.

Mariko is a young woman who had a very rough life. She married young and had a child young, and then her husband died. Her daughter had a skin condition, and was bullied throughout her school life. And then, when her daughter has finally found a career and gotten married, Mariko suffers a fatal stroke. She wakes up as Sophie Olzon, a 17-year-old young woman who has apparently just “fallen” out of her bedroom window, fortunately escaping death. Sophie has a skin condition (which the novel’s illustrations really try to avoid showing more than once, preferring to have her veiled face just look slightly dark) where the skin all over her body is covered in boils, sores and pus. Also, her magic is weak. She had fallen in love and gotten engaged… only to find that her fiance loved someone else and was being bought off by her well-meaning father. So she threw herself out her window. However, now she has 57-year-ol Mariko’s memories as well, and so knows exactly how to cope with this – helping others.

This book amounts to a short story collection with wraparounds involving Sophie’s life. Each chapter we meet a new person, and Sophie has to hear their tragic backstory, because the more she can visualize what happened and identify with the person, the better the healing goes. We see princesses with a curse, noble ladies whose houses have been usurped by a new stepmother/sister, actresses whose arrogance got them knifed, and exotic dancers who have to deal with a baby and still try to arouse men. We even see one of Sophie’s former classmates, who was briefly sympathetic but gave in to peer pressure. That said, Sophie is the best reason to read this. Mariko’s memories do not magically make Sophie better – she spends all of this book still dealing with the crushing despair of having to spend her life like this, and at one point heals someone so much she almost dies from mana loss. Oh yes, and the guy who’s clearly meant to be her love interest does not really understand emotions. At all.

Basically, this series is an emotional roller-coaster and I was quite moved a lot of the time. Also, it ends with the second volume, so I assume things will eventually look up. Till then, please enjoy our heroine healing others because she cannot heal herself. (Also, bonus points for using a fantasy version of The Pickwick Papers to try to get her hard-headed healer friend to understand the foibles of human life.)