Reincarnated As the Last of My Kind, Vol. 2

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By Kiri Komori and Yamigo. Released in Japan as “Tensei Shitara Zetsumetsu Sunzen no Kishou Shuzokudeshita” on the Shōsetsuka ni Narō website. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Roman Lempert.

It’s always fun to see a cute, slow life sort of tale fight against its own narrative, which is trying to make sure that the slow life speeds up in a hurry. This second volume sees Tina and her family continuing to try to make improvements to the inn, better food, and better quality potions over the course of about four years. Indeed, when the call comes to invite her to a school where she can learn to be a better alchemist… she declines, as she’d rather stay where she is right now. Unfortunately, these are Troubled Times, and it’s going to be very hard to escape the pull of the incoming war, especially when you’re a prodigy with mad skills that no one has ever seen in their life. And as if that weren’t enough, there’s also a combination religious/ecological crisis going on, which could mean the literal end of the world unless it finds a savior. Two guesses who that’s supposed to be.

The first chapter in this book is unique to the book, i.e. was not pat of the webnovel, as Tina and her family play host to a scholar with a preference for very hot food, which involves making udon. After this we get two larger chapters, featuring Tina at age 10 and 12 respectively. In the first, Lico and the other knights arrive at the inn searching for a group of demihumans that got lost in the forest. This is a fantasy series, so naturally you get one elf, one dwarf, and one kobold, though the angel is a surprise, to both Tina and the reader. They have to fight off a nasty monster attack that almost kills off Lico – again. The second story sees Tina and her family head into the big city to attend the funeral of Marcus’ former commanding officer. Unfortunately, on their way back they meet some twins under attack by a very nasty zombie. In fact… there have been a LOT more monsters and zombies lately…

A lot of this is very fun. I liked Shida, the elf, who is an arrogant SOB in the elf tradition but also strangely likeable, and I appreciated that he and Tina did not remotely hit it off. Marcus’ pathetic attempts at romance, combined with his daughter Nakona’s sheer obliviousness to the many men in love with her is amusing, and we, as read3ers, empathize with Tina’s frustration, especially when Marcus and Lico are trying to out-selfless each other. (Lico wins, by virtue of being near death.) That said, a lot of this book is pretty ominous and scary. Both the text description and the illustration of the zombie attacking Tina and company is harrowing, and you start to wonder if this really will be the sort of series to kill off its regulars. Then there’s the subplot regarding human religion and prayer literally killing the world, which might upset some readers, but is pretty well done in universe.

So the question at the end of this 2nd volume is, will the 3rd book involve Tina heading off to save the world, or will Tina try to save the world while still doing things like making honey and trying to create supreme potions? Regardless, if you enjoyed the first book in the series (and are perhaps not evangelical Christian), this one is definitely worth your time.

Culinary Chronicles of the Court Flower, Vol. 1

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By Miri Mikawa and Kasumi Nagi. Released in Japan as “Ikka Kōkyū Ryōrichō” by Kadokawa Beans Bunko. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by afm.

It is somewhat hard not to start reading this and not think of The Apothecary Diaries, which also features a young woman arriving at the Emperor’s palace and featuring a number of young women who are there to be his courtesans, as well as a eunuch who is rumored not to be. Oh yes, and clearly based on Chinese rather than Japanese tropes. That said, the two series end up going in a slightly different direction, as Maomao’s one smart cookie who’s there to be a Jessica Fletcher sort. Meanwhile, all poor Rimi wants is somewhere to prepare delicious food and a sense that she belongs. Unfortunately, getting either of those proves difficult. Despite almost immediately running into most of the “very handsome men” part of the inner palace, she finds her homemade fermented rice in danger, the other women of the palace bully her tremendously, and, oh yes, the Emperor takes one look at the gifts her nation sent along with her and decides to have her executed. How can she make dashi like this?

Rimi can be a hard character to get a hold of. At first I thought she was a “fluffhead” sort of character, but that’s less due to her natural state of mind and more due to her spending most of her life as an extraneous extra. For the last ten years she’s lived with only one other person, her older sister, and cooking was essentially her entire life. Most of the decisions she’s made over the course of her life have involved “I’ll do this so that they don’t worry about me”. Now she’s having severe culture shock (much of the novel is about the differences between this “not-China” that she lives in now and the “not-Japan” she was born in), can’t even really speak the language very well (the translator does a good job of showing off how her attempts to speak to the emperor or Shusei can occasionally be incredibly blunt or even coarse), and, of course, has been threatened with execution multiple times. She faints more than once here, but she certainly earns them.

As for the men, well, this is a reverse harem series, so they’re all very pretty. I’m guessing the main love interest is Shusei, the self-styled culinary scientist, whose attempts at healthy food are not well-loved. He bonds with Rimi over food, and seems pretty smitten with her by the end of the book, though of course he has no idea what that feeling is. The Emperor may threaten to cut off her head multiple times, but shows himself to be a big softie when presented with food he doesn’t hate – which is to say, food in the proper environment. As for the food itself, well, given the ingredients are clearly meant to be the fantasy equivalent of kombu and katsuobushi, we can guess why she’s so desperately pointing out that they are not “planks of wood”. There is much here to interest a foodie, especially if you like discussing the difference between Chinese and Japanese cuisine.

This is 11 volumes total in Japan, so we’ve clearly got a ways to go. but it’s a very good start, and if you like plucky heroines, handsome bishonen, and a LOT of talk about dashi, this is a winner.

Ascendance of a Bookworm: I’ll Do Anything to Become a Librarian!, Part 3: Adopted Daughter of an Archduke, Vol. 5

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By Miya Kazuki and You Shiina. Released in Japan as “Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen” by TO Books. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by quof.

Word of warning: this review is filled with spoilers. If you do not want to be spoiled, you should only read everything above the cover image.

The final volume of this particular arc sees Rozemyne finally managing to achieve everything she needs in order to fix her mana and her body. Given that we’d previously seen the expedition to get the ruelle ingredient, and saw it fail, it should not be surprising that we see it succeed here. The main new plot point is the introduction of the Archduke’s daughter Charlotte, who adores Rozemyne and sees her as a big sister, something that absolutely fills Rozemyne (and, let’s be frank here, Myne) with delight. She is therefore determined to give Charlotte the best possible baptism before she takes her potion, which we are told will require her to sleep for about six months. Unfortunately, things are (again) sent into turmoil by Wilfried being unable to think politically. And then, well… everything turns terrible.

Even with the hint that Rozemyne would be out cold for six months as seen earlier in the volume, I don’t think any of us expected the time skip to actually be TWO YEARS. The fact that it doesn’t even fully heal her (though she is allegedly much healthier now) and also still looks like a seven-year-old makes it extremely easy to understand her stunned reaction at the “end” of the book. Except, given this is a Bookworm novel, we have a bunch of stories from other perspectives at the end, and this time they take up almost half the entire volume. The stories serve to tell us two things: first, that everything Rozemyne does and accomplishes is truly stunning and irreplaceable… and second, that she’;s also set everything up so well that it can run pretty well without her. Indeed, Benno states that this is a good thing in some ways, as having no new innovations for the next while will let the innovations she’s already come up with take hold.

While this book revolves around a serious event, it is not without its humor. Angelica manages to even inject the best joke in the volume into the middle of the tense midair rescue of Charlotte. It is also not without its romance, though surprisingly – though it shouldn’t be – the pairing its’ been teasing for the last few books is the one that doesn’t work out. Bookworm is walking a fine balancing act between showing off the problems with a very class-based system while also showing that this is not something that can be changed overnight by one girl and her books, and The non-marriage of Damuel and Brigitte is an excellent example of this, as it forces them to think harder in order to give the reader more immersion into this very political, very difficult country. On the lighter side, Tulli is suddenly becoming a hot commodity… am I the only one seeing her and Lutz as a pairing? If only as Lutz and Myne was pretty thoroughly torpedoed several books ago.

The next arc has the exhausting subtitle “Founder of the Royal Academy’s So-Called Library Committee”, and is apparently “The Great Brain at the Academy – The Rozemyne Variations”. We’ll see how she copes with her miniature Rip Van Winkle timeskip next time. Till then, this is another volume that reminds you why this series is one of the most popular light novels of the last few years.