By Miya Kazuki and You Shiina. Released in Japan as “Honzuki no Gekokujou: Hannelore no Kizokuin Gonensei” by TO Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by quof.
I’ll be honest, I was a bit worried about this title. I have mentioned before that I get very uncomfortable about books where the key feature is “let’s embarrass the main character”, and Hannelore seems to run on that half the time. I was expecting to be cringing a lot. And, well, I wasn’t wrong, to a degree. Especially in the first half, it can be difficult to watch Hannelore attempt to be the waif-ish romantic heroine in a duchy filled with meatheads who only care about fighting. That said, given that we’re getting Hannelore’s POV for an extended period, we get to see a far deeper side of her here, and we discover that she’s not really as far away from the Dunkenfelger default as she pretends to be. We especially see this in the second half of the book, where things go completely bananas and Hannelore shows that it’s not just Rozemyne that can accidentally derail an entire country.
Hannelore shows up for her penultimate year at the academy with a few new complications in her life. After the disaster with the bride-stealing ditter, she has been assigned two fiances from within the Duchy – Rasantark, a typical hot-headed, not-so-bright knight guy, and Kenntrips, a milder, smarter sort. Both grew up with Hannelore and both are in love with her, something that she only finds out as this book goes on. This is to avoid her being snatched away by Sigiswald, who’s an Aub now but still appalling, and still thinks he deserves whatever he wants. Oh yes, and Ortwin, of Drewanchel, *also* proposes to her. The trouble is that none of this surfeit of fiances is who she wants – she’s still carrying a torch for Wilfried. So she decides now is the time to make her feelings clear… and things get weird.
I don’t want to spoil too much about the last half of the book, which comes as a genuine surprise. I will say that it seems to put a nail into the coffin of Hannelore and Wilfried. We see what his future is expected to be, and we also see him trying to convey to Hannelore without actually saying anything that his reputation is actually FAR worse than is publicly known. He indicates that if had been a year earlier he might have said yes… but the Wilfried of a year earlier was far more bratty, immature and impulsive, and that would just be a bigger disaster. The other great thing about this book is Hannelore’s character development, as she’s made to see, over and over again, how her tendency to play all her cards close to her chest and not give away what she’s feeling just makes everyone around her uncomfortable and distrusting, especially after the ditter last year. By the end of the book she’s grown and learned how to lead better… and she’ll need it, as the cliffhanger of the book is (I’m paraphrasing) “My lady, you are fucked.”
The second volume of this sequel (it’s a full sequel, Rozemyne is here but in support – and she’s also clearly the best person to marry Hannelore, except she has Ferdinand and, as far as I can tell, gay people don’t exist in this universe) has just been announced for this August, so it’ll be a year till we see it. I expect the third short story collection will be next. Bookworm fans should love this.
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