By Kamihara and Shiro46. Released in Japan as “Tensei Reijo to SÅ«ki na Jinsei o” by Hayakawa Shobo. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Hengtee Lim.
This is the second half of what was originally a one-part 500+-page monster, and as such it definitely feels different than the first half. Which makes sense. If you look at the subtitle of this book, the first half was all about the ruination, so it makes sense that the second half would be about the resolve. As such, there’s not QUITE as many tribulations in this book compared to the first two? At least in terms of piles of death and threats of death. That said, Karen certainly does suffer a large number of shocks here. She allies with Reinald, which is the best thing to do to protect Conrad and those she lost, as well as those she still has, but it does make a whole lot of people think of her as… something impolite. What’s more, after the shock of her parentage that started the series, we now get more revelations about it, which may become a bigger problem down the road, as everyone’s packing up and moving.
That’s right, they’re doing new covers for us! It looks pretty great. That said, Reinald’s sister sort of comes and goes like a storm, and is not the actual focus of this book, which remains squarely on Karen. The kingdom itself is done for, and it turns out that this was actually very deliberate on Reinald’s part – he’s the son of the Emperor of Arrendle, who declares that only those who do amazing things can succeed him, and “overthrow a country next door for me” is one of those things. Karen is given some new land to oversee, mostly as the fall of Conrad was engineered very carefully by the Empire and the country on the other side – but things are rough, and Wendel is getting bullied at school. As such, a large chunk of the family makes the decision to move to the Empire.
As ever, Karen is the highlight of the book, and I get the feeling that a lot of people who like her try to compete to see who can make her show an actual emotion – though that may be unreliable narration on her part, as we see at points that her face is showing emotions that she is deliberately trying not to tell the reader about. It was also nice to see Erd again, who apparently went to the Empire and became a mad scientist – not as eccentric as Six, but still plenty eccentric, to be honest. She’s on the cover of Book 3-1, so I’m sure we’ll see more of her. On the other hand, I have to feel bad for Gerda. She loved her sister so much she married a man she didn’t want to to save Karen’s reputation, and now here she is, with a husband she loved dead, and Karen clearly knew it was coming. It’s a quiet note of tragedy in the books, where a lot of times things happen that are sad but no one can quite do anything about. I suspect she and Karen will never meet again.
This ends the second book proper, so you can be assured the main story ends with a very nasty cliffhanger, as Karen is seemingly caught in a magical trap. For those who love seeing bad things happen to good people when it’s well written.
0 Comments