D-Genesis: Three Years after the Dungeons Appeared, Vol. 1

Leave a reply

By KONO Tsuranori and ttl. Released in Japan as “D Genesis: Dungeon ga Dekite 3-nen” by Enterbrain. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by JCT.

This was the second recommendation by folks when I was asking about series I hadn’t tried before, and this one was far more vocal and vociferous than The Frontier Lord Begins with Zero Subjects. People really, really pushed hard for this series. When it was licensed, I was simply absolutely sick to death of dungeons, so did not bother to read it, despite the fact that it had an obvious sell on the cover art: Noa Izumi. OK, that’s not actually Noa Izumi, but close enough, frankly. I do hope Miyoshi pilots a Labor before this ends. That said, the people selling me on this series turned out to be absolutely correct: this was very, very good. I will be reading more. The main reason it’s very good is that there is minimal dungeon crawling. It’s all about the “what if” concept of dungeons appearing all over the modern-day world, how they would be regulated, and what happens when our heroes accidentally find a game-changer but want to stay having a normal life?

3 years ago, dungeons appeared all over the world, leading to a new industry. Today, Keigo Yoshimura is currently in a horrible R&D job where he is being abused by his middle-management boss. Then one day he’s part of a bad traffic accident. He’s not injured, but it turns out a dungeon opened up in the street. He accidentally runs over a goblin (thus making him eligible for dungeon rewards), and then accidentally pushes a huge mass of rebar into the dungeon, where it drops aaallllll the way to the bottom. This clears the dungeon, and makes him the top dungeon clearer in the world. He knows he does not want to be famous for this. Fortunately, his co-worker, kohai, and bestie Azusa Miyoshi finds out about this, and about the skill he picked up by clearing it: he can essentially analyze dungeons and figure out how to get whatever he needs. The days of random drops are over! And now he *really* has to try to hide.

The worldbuilding is pretty good. I didn’t hate it. It’s perhaps a bit unrealistic that our protagonists are allowed to do this, but the author freely admits that’s part of the fiction. The best reason to read this are the two leads, who are terrific. Keigo is the sort of guy who tends to narrate cynical but also tries to help everyone he can – which in this book is mostly young attractive women, this is still a light novel. That said, he has absolutely no filter and says everything he thinks, so I do not expect romance anytime soon. Miyoshi has known him for a while, so is clearly used to him. She’s a math genius and also a food/drink gourmet, so she is very interested in helping him so that she can get rich and get the best food and wine. They’re also having fun examining stats, seeing what the unknown drops actually do, killing slimes for 300 … erm, slimes till they discover what that does, and healing grievous injuries in a very secret, don’t tell anyone way.

I assume the second book is going to have more people get involved in their lives, and no doubt will have more dungeon crawling (there’s a big wolf on the cover, for one). And I warn people that there is considerable math in this. In any case, my bad. This is a great series so far, and I will try to fit the other, erm, eight volumes to date in my schedule when I can.

The Frontier Lord Begins with Zero Subjects: The Blue-Horned Maiden

Leave a reply

By Fuurou and Kinta. Released in Japan as “Ryoumin 0-nin Start no Henkyou Ryoushu-sama” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Hengtee Lim.

I had reached a brief period in my giant pile of reviews where I had a gap in my schedule, so asked folks what books they might want me to try that I had skipped before. This one came up first, so I gave it a try. It’s not bad. I have a few issues with one or two of the subplots (see below), but overall this fits in nicely in the “I arrive in a new place and slowly accumulate people who adore me” slow life genre. If there’s one big objection that I have to the books, it’s that the chapter titles are all locations. The Next Day, By the River. A Week Later, At the Yurt. If you’re that desperate, there’s always the option of just leaving it at numbers, you know? That said, the chapter titles don’t give much away as a result. Except that there’s a yurt. Which makes sense, given that this setting feels very much like fantasy Mongolia.

Dias, an orphan who strives to live up to his parents’ last words to him, is the hero of the most recent war, and is very much in need of a reward. The nobility decide to grant him a domain. They take him out to the middle of nothing but grassy plains, leave him with no food or water, and say “everything you can see is yours”. Then they leave. You can tell they are SWELL GUYS. He finds water, then decides to just sleep where he is. He then wakes up to find a teenage girl with a blue horn on her head (hence the subtitle) angrily asking him who he is. It turns out this land is actually part of her oni clan’s, and they’ve been at war with the city he came from for some time. That said, her horn is also a lie detector of a sort, and she can see he has nothing but good intentions. Which confuses her. See, Dias wants to be a good frontier lord. Even if he’s not sure how to do this.

Dias is one of those big dumb guys who’s good at fighting provided he doesn’t have to think (he uses a giant axe), but as it turns out he’s not all that dumb, he just tends to take time to think things through. I was fairly sure that Alna would be the tsundere sort who would slowly warm up to him over the course of the series, but I could not have been more wrong. Their tribe prizes strength over everything, and when this guy not only takes out a huge number of fantasy bison but also a dragon (or, as he insists, a giant turtle), she falls in love almost immediately, and they’re engaged (he refuses to let them be married till she’s of age) by the middle of the book. My one grump is that not once, but twice, we get situations where we think there will be slaves sold, only to be told “no, there is a lot of slavery, but these people are not slaves because _____”. As a result, Dias ends up adopting twin daughters, and a nearby sympathetic lord has a harem of adoring women. Both subplots could honestly have happened without slavery. You can just… not write the background slavery.

So overall, this was pretty good. I’m not sure I have a huge desire to read more, but if you like the genre it’s definitely worth a shot.

Taking My Reincarnation One Step at a Time: No One Told Me There Would Be Monsters!, Vol. 8

1 Reply

By KAYA and Naru. Released in Japan as “Tensei Shōjo wa Mazu Ippo kara Hajimetai: Mamono ga Iru toka Kiitenai!” by MF Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Amy Osteraas.

Of all the series I was expecting to parallel the main plot in this one, Though I Am an Inept Villainess is perhaps not the most obvious choice. But it does make sense. Sara has had a life in Japan where she spent most of it ill and not being a real kid, and then she ended up in this world and spent almost all of it also not being a normal kid. Even when she met up with Allen, who is himself nothing like real children in this world, they both act relatively mature, and they’re both surrounded by adults most of the time. And now they’re 17, which is to say they’re adults in this world, but have not quite mastered the emotional heft needed to survive as an adult. As a result, when a traumatic event happens to both of them, they have their first big fight. And everyone around them suffers. Because these are GOOD KIDS.

Now that Nelly and Chris are married, they have the perfect choice for a honeymoon: go explore a dungeon, of course. And they take Allen and Sara along with them. Unfortunately, the deep floor of the dungeon turns out to be filled with gargoyles, which badly injure Chris and Nelly and give Allen near fatal injuries, which Sara has to treat by giving him a potion that either works pretty well or hastens death. Allen survives, but as it turns out he has to “take it easy” for a month or else he’ll never get back his old strength. Unfortunately, medical research is still mostly in its infancy in this world, so no one knows what “take it easy” really entails. Meanwhile, Sara, who has her barriers, was perfectly safe throughout this. Allen is realizing that “strong enough to protect her” is going to need a big re-definition.

I do appreciate that the book does not make this ENTIRELY Allen’s fault. Just mostly his fault. It’s about an 80-20 split. The main issue is that the only ones who still see Allen and Sara as kids are Allen and Sara themselves. Everyone around them assumes they’re going to be married in a few months, but the two of them still can’t quite make that jump, and when Sara goes to the capital alone, without Allen, it’s a game changer for her, and everyone comments on it and realizes exactly what’s happened. It must be depressing when everyone around you knows you better than you know yourself. In any case, Sara is a full-fledged apothecary with little more to be taught, Allen is learning how to fight properly as opposed to the hand-wavey bullshit way Nelly fights, and they are developing careers. Settling down will soon need to be a thing.

Unfortunately, the next book seems to start a new, non-romantic arc. Well, I suppose that’s fine. This is a great series. And it had a good amount of wolves this time, too!