The Executioner and Her Way of Life: The Promised Land

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By Mato Sato and nilitsu. Released in Japan as “Shokei Shoujo no Virgin Road” by GA Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jenny McKeon.

There is a famous quote (actually he said it a number of times) by Anton Chekhov about dramatic principles. One of the quotes says “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.”. This is a perfectly fine dramatic tenet to use, and I have no real issues with it. That said… you still need to write something OTHER than the pistol hanging on the wall. You can’t just have 90 minutes of ‘pistol on the wall, la de da’ and expect the audience to stay invested. In case you’re wondering where I’m going with this, the 5th volume of The Executioner and Her Way of Life does have some guns go off near the end of the book. But the first half of this volume may be one of the most boring I’ve seen in Japanese light novels, as everyone walks around aimlessly, reiterates what we already know, and waits for Menou to have some revelations about herself.

Everyone’s arrived at the Holy Land. Flare has taken Akari, put her in an ivory tower, and given her an existential crisis to keep her busy for most of the book. Momo and Ashuna arrive there, and have some warmed-over banter before Ashuna promptly exits the plot after seeing a future plotline. Momo is, to her surprise, taken in by the Archbishop and put to work with Hooseyard, who is a summary of all the “naive but nerdy” glasses girls in anime. Manon, Pandaemonium, and Sahara have arrived to wreak havoc. And Menou has arrived to fight Flare and lose, because she knows that’s going to happen. The problem is that she’s right for the wrong reasons. Something she figures out when they fight and it becomes clear that Menou has surpassed her master… in all ways but one.

The book turns around, as I said above, once Menou has a horrific realization: she’s only killed strangers she barely knew, and when she tries to kill someone close to her, like, say, Flare… she can’t do it. In other words, despite forcing herself into the role of a “villain”, she has empathy. Surprise! That said, it is pretty dramatically satisfying, and I enjoyed her burst of hysterical laughter. Akari has the misfortune of spending most of the book in a state of shock after realizing that if Menou dies, and she has to rewind time again,. she’s probably going to start losing her memories of her time with Menou, which nearly destroys her. Of course, there’s an obvious answer to this for both of them, one that Flare (who seems to be trying to commit suicide by cop throughout this book – Menou is the cop) is trying to hammer home. By the end of this book, we’ve finally moved past “I’m going to kill Akari/Only Menou can kill me”, and it will be interesting to see where things go next, especially after seeing the last few pages, which confirm something hinted since the start of the series.

I’ll keep going with this, because I want to see what happens to the characters. But “writing style” is not a reason anyone should read this series, and it makes the front half of this volume sheer murder.

Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?!, Vol. 14

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By FUNA and Itsuki Akata. Released in Japan as “Watashi, Nouryoku wa Heikinchi de tte Itta yo ne!” by SQEX Novels. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Diana Taylor. Adapted by Maggie Cooper.

It’s been a while since we last had the adventures of Mile and company in front of us. Most of the reason for this is that the series got a new publisher in Japan, Square Enix, which necessitated renegotiating the license for the series, which takes time. But now, a mere 16 months after the last book, we have a new volume of the series. Perhaps sensing that this was a chance to show off why the series was picked up by a larger publisher, the author has decided to get slightly more serious than usual this time around. Oh, not to worry, there’s still plenty of “Mile does OP stuff” and fourth wall breaking, it’s just that the volume as a whole seems to want to go back to the main plot of the series, the one it usually ignores for books on end. It’s going to get harder to ignore from now on, though, as there are portals opening from another world.

That said, we have another plot to get through first. The Crimson Vow are hired as escorts/bodyguards… supposedly… to take Clairia and her fellow elves back to their village. The reason turns out to be trickier than that, as they wanted the Vow to distract from what turns out to be a “get married already” meeting set up by the village. This involves a lot of inbred misogyny, and the Vow quickly take matters into their own hands. The Guild then hires them to investigate a nearby kingdom, where things are just going… slightly worse than usual. For no stated reason. Mile is the perfect person to figure out what’s really going on… robots are making portals to their world from another world and sending in stronger, smarter monsters to take out the adventurers!

The elf stuff was not as good as the rest of the book, mostly depending on “ha ha, it’s funny because elf men are lolicons” and a heaping helping of “women should stay in the village and breed more elves”. The latter, to be fair, the narrative rips apart with its bare hands, and indeed one of the main themes of the entire series has been “you don’t have to get married immediately”. The second part is more setup for the next few books, made more amusing by Mile literally sacrificing some of her nanos to a portal to another world just to get information, and their irritated response. We also see that the Crimson Vow are a mature, powerful, respected team… but only in their own lands, and when they go elsewhere, or when their intelligence is disseminated by the Crown, it still has an air of “these are stupid kids, why should we care?” to it. Mike needs to become more famous, and not just as an author.

This is a good, not great book, with the series’ usual flaws. But it also has the series’ usual strengths as well, and fans should be pleased.

Sugar Apple Fairy Tale: The Silver Sugar Master and the Obsidian Fairy

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By Miri Mikawa and Aki. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Beans Bunko Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Nicole Wilder.

Frequently in romance novels, in both English and Japanese, I find myself waiting for the bomb to go off. It’s always really easy to spot the bomb. It’s the guy who we first meet. He’s not on the cover art. He’s usually a Swell Guy ™. He loves the heroine. He says so. A lot. Ignoring whatever she might have to say about it. Sometimes everyone else around her also assumes that they’re fated to be together. And, credit to our Sugar Apple heroine, she is deeply aware of this and runs away at the earliest opportunity. Alas, the bomb follows her. That’s when I started to get annoyed. I was on edge, waiting for the Asshole Bomb to go off, and when it finally did, I breathed a sigh of relief. Now, it does mean the identity of the villain in this first book is immediately obvious from about page 3, but that’s fine. This first book is not about Asshole Dude, it’s about a teenager who just lost her mother weeks before trying to cope with overwhelming grief.

Our story takes place in the Kingdom of Highland, where they have candy crafters, the highest ranked of which are Silver Sugar Masters, whose candy is basically endorsed by the Crown. Our heroine, Anne, has bee traveling the country with her mother Emma, learning at her elbow and growing up. Then Emma gets sick and dies. Anne resolves to travel to the main city of the Kingdom so that she can pass the test to become a Silver Sugar Master. She needs to do this by the next holy day, so that her mother’s spirit can rest in peace. Of course, she can’t make it in time till she takes a nasty and brutal shortcut… for which she will need a bodyguard. Fortunately, this Kingdom also has fairies! To be their slaves.

So yeah, I liked this book, but it has a very high bar to clear. There’s slavery here, and our heroine immediately buys a slave, because she needs a bodyguard to get there in time and does not have the ability to stick to her principles. She talks about slavery being wrong, and frees him at the end of this book, but… yeah. Fairies are still slaves, that’s not going away. As for the rest of the book, the romance was OK, but I think my favorite part was exploring Anne’s attempts to be plucky and have gumption in the wake of her mother’s death, which the book needs to remind us a few times was only about three weeks before the start. She’s an excellent candy crafter, but she’s not making her OWN candies, she’s making the candies her mother made. She needs to accept her grief, then she can flower as a true artist. That’s the good part of the book.

I also enjoy Culinary Chronicles of the Court Flower, by the same author. This series came out before that one, and is 17 volumes, so we have a ways to go. If you like romantic fantasies, and can get past “slaves are bad, but here I am buying a slave”, this is a solid start.