Engaging with the Plot: A Former Cat’s Attempt to Save Her Now Temporary Fiancé, Vol. 1

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By Usagi Hoshimi and Qi234. Released in Japan as “Konyakusha-sama ni wa Unmei no Heroine ga Arawaremasu ga, Zantei Konyaku Life wo Mankitsushimasu! Anata no Noroi, Kiraware Akujo no Watashi ga Toicha Dame desu ka?” by Earth Star Luna. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Minna Lin.

It’s always dangerous when you’re making stew. When you have something that’s just “let’s throw as many common ingredients into the pot as we can, stir it up, and eat that for supper”. A lot of the time it just ends up being an ugly, overcomplicated mess. Sometimes, though, all the ingredients manage to coalesce into something really tasty. You wouldn’t dare call it original – the exact opposite – but the common muck ends up being just what you wanted. We get that here. This is a villainess story with a capital V, having all the trimmings, and yet it works because it doesn’t take itself remotely seriously (at times I wondered if it was actually trying to be a parody) and because it has a really good story to tell about love, and what happens to people who get it and people who don’t.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but we open the book with our main character being dumped publicly by her fiance, the second prince. Lucille was well-meaning and did her princess lessons well, but she knew the princess didn’t love her and was trying much too hard to change that. Now she’s engaged to the “cursed marquess”. Felix. This causes her to pass out… and when she wakes up she has memories of her past… eight lives. Yes, this is her ninth life, but her first as a human. In the previous eight, she was a beloved pet cat of some of the most influential and powerful people in history. And what’s more, she has a prophecy, which shows her pissing off Felix, getting into dark magic, and being killed by the Saint who’ll be arriving in a year. Fortunately, with her past memories and her premonitions, she can change literally everything about this plot.

A lot of this just made me laugh. It’s always nice to see an isekai’d Japanese girl who’s part of the supporting cast rather than the lead – one of Lucille’s past owners was a reincarnator who loved her “smol” kitty. The second prince is a buffoon who cannot recognize that the beautiful woman in front of him is his ex-fiancee, just not wearing heavy makeup, and it just gets sillier and sillier as he rants. But there’s also some really good stuff here. Lucille, being an ex-cat, does not remotely worry about what anyone thinks of her and is very confident. And she’s surrounded by people who are filled with self-loathing or self-doubt, ranging from the cursed Marquess to her new friend Mary Hunt… erm, Alice Rohans, who suffers from being the normal one in a generation of geniuses, to her own father, who is caring but it comes out as uncaring. If there’s a weakness, it’s that the dialogue can seem a bit TOO overly elaborate. Sometimes these people speak as if they’re reading words off a page rather than being in the moment.

This has a second volume coming, which I assume will resolve the curse as well as the cliffhanger we saw. If you liked Lady Bumpkin, and you liked Bakarina, and wondered what would happen if you smashed them together, this is that book.

Lacey Longs for Freedom: The Dawn Witch’s Low-Key Life after Defeating the Demon King, Vol. 3

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By Hyogo Amagasa and Kyouichi. Released in Japan as “Akatsuki no Majo Lacey wa Jiyū ni Ikitai” by Overlap Novels f. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Amanogawa Tenri.

This one snuck up on me. I was sort of gently mocking the book as I went through the first half, which is very much on the “low-key life” part of the title. Lacey invents oven mitts. Lacey invents a camera. But then it turns out that all of this, as well as the previous two books, are important as Lacey is asked to come back to the capital. And, while there’s a lot of backsliding and introverted panicking, the difference between the Lacey of the start of the first book and the one we see in this volume is night and day. She’s an incredibly powerful witch, and everyone and their brother want to use her. But while she does want to bring the kingdom happiness, she also wants the privilege of choosing how she is used. And people are taking notice. Best of all, Lacey finally cottons on to what her feelings for Wayne actually are. She’s not quite ready to do anything yet, but the feelings are recognized.

Wayne shows up at the village again, and this time he’s here for a full month, though he doesn’t say why. We see Lacey helping Cedric, who turns out to have a daughter who is getting married, and he wants to bake something special for the wedding but can’t figure out what. After the wedding, discussion of how the kids are having trouble remembering what the dress looked like makes Lacey want to create photography, which she does through a wonderful series of trial and error and the help of her phoenix. Finally, though, Wayne reveals why he’s there. The princess (you know, the one who cheated with Lacey’s fiancee in Book 1) is getting married, but has locked herself in her room right before the wedding. The king is asking Lacey to help do something about that. But why is the princess there in the first place?

After getting a fairly typical “evil noble” in the last book, the most refreshing part of this one is seeing how it handles the prior antagonists. The King is mindboggled by how much Lacey has changed from just a year away from saving the world and being the Dawn Witch. Alicia, the princess, already fully regrets her philandering, but being married off to a foreign prince (who’s fine, at least) has her lonely and homesick before she even leaves. Heck, we even get a side story showing that Raymond, whose fault all of this really is, has gotten used to life on the farm where he’s been exiled too, and is even coming through with delicious vegetables. If there’s a weak spot in the series, it continues to be Wayne, who I sort of but not really wish would be found to have a dark side, or a secret he hasn’t revealed. He’s just this bland guy.

But we’re not here for him, we’re here for Lacey, and she’s fun. She also reminds me of Monica, so Silent Witch fans should also get this. The next volume, which should wrap the series up, is not out in Japan yet.

Reincarnated As a Sword, Vol. 1

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By Yuu Tanaka and Llo. Released in Japan as “Tensei Shitara Ken deshita” by GC Novels. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Mike Rachmat. Adapted by Jaymee Goh.

When this book first came out in 2019, I read about 25 pages of it and stopped, abandoning the book as I really didn’t like it. I mentioned this recently to some other folks, whose reaction was mostly “wait, you didn’t even get to the catgirl?”Sure enough, I guess there is a catgirl on the cover. And as I deal with a slow August, I thought that maybe I had just been in a bad mood that day, and I started the book again, determined to finish it. Well, I did finish it. And it definitely does improve when Fran shows up. But I also was not wrong back in 2019. This might be the worst start to a popular light novel series I have ever read. Our hero is annoying, he’s overly chuuni, he kills a lot of monsters without remorse (oddly, he gets the remorse later, after meeting Fran), and there’s also a ton of stat counting. And, of course, “Oh, I guess this world has slavery.” Said like you’re going to the deli.

Our sword protagonist, who doesn’t even remember his old name, is hit by… a sports car (not a truck!) and wakes up in a fantasy world as a magic sword. He spends the first eighty pages or so of this book trying out cool powers, defeating increasingly dangerous monsters, being being incredibly smug and annoying. Unfortunately, he then ends up stuck in a land that saps mana, and can no longer move around. Cue Fran, a catgirl who’s part of a group of slaves who ran into monsters. After taking care of the monsters, and the slave owner, Fran and the sword (who she names “Teacher”) team up, and head to the nearest large city. From this point the book gets far more generic and predictable, which is actually a point in its favor. The writer stops trying to make the sword entertaining and focuses instead on the sword trying to teach Fran how to get strong and also possibly not become a sociopath.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Aren’t I a huge fan of A Late-Start Tamer’s Laid-Back Life, by the same author? I am indeed. Oddly, the books seemingly start off very similar, with our main character going around, experimenting, and looking at their stats go up when they do things. The Tamer book, though, is actually a GAME, not reality, so I don’t need to apply the same morality to it. Yuta’s experimentation, due to his class, avoids fighting for the most part, while the sword’s revels in it. Yuta is generally nice to everyone and gives away things without realizing their value. The sword eventually starts to realize that killing goblins while literally imitating Stormbringer is perhaps a bit too evil, but since this is a world where all monsters are default evil, he doesn’t dwell on this too much. At least he doesn’t lech on Fran, who is only twelve years old. Her stoicness, while clearly the result of trauma, also makes her more interesting in contrast to her partner.

So yes, this gets better. I’m sure later volumes are interesting. But I’d rather stick needles in my eyes than read the start of this book again. Moving on.