By Harunohi Biyori and Geso Umiu. Released in Japan as “Akuma Koujo” by K Lanove Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Julie Goniwich. Adapted by Emlyn Dornemann.

I got startled 3/4 of the way through this book, but this time it was more because I forgot the premise than for any “what a twist” reasons. I was so distracted by our little evil princess’ “reincarnated as a villainess” style storyline that I forgot about the first part of Volume 1. And so when we got her four lazy, eccentric and just plain awful retainers, I was expecting it to be either the standard “she whips them into shape with the power of intense training”, or, later on, “she whips them into shape by putting the fear of god into them”. Then the actual plot kicks in, and each of the four retainers gets a lovely little “this is why I am a terrible person deep down” flashback, and I realized that this was not the direction this series was going. And then I was surprised, and reminded of the first part of Volume 1, which explains everything. Gotta pay attention to things.

Over the course of the book Princess Yulucia goes from four to six years old, and it’s an eventful time. She has her debut at a ball where everyone is absolutely overwhelmed by her (or terrified of her), but her sisters still manage to act just like wicked stepsisters always do in these sorts of books. She gains the aforementioned attendants, who are, respectively, bad and obsequious, bad and lazy, bad and angry, and bad and ditzy. She heals people with crippling diseases (yay), and cures the early male pattern baldness of various loser nobles (less yay). Unfortunately, another very striking young noble is inviting girls to her own nighttime tea party… and some of them are not coming back. Time for Yulucia to investigate… and do something about her sucky servants.

The last quarter of this book is not quite as striking as the first volume, but Yulucia makes it very clear that she does not suffers fools gladly, and if they don’t improve, well, their souls will be destroyed. That’s how it rolls with demons. Fortunately, she’s able to save their bodies, and it turns out she has some very capable folks to inhabit those bodies. We also see some innocent lesser nobles get invited to Miss Mylene’s tea party, and we never see them again, so clearly this is not a case of “and then we found them in the attic and returned them to their parents” but “and then we found their corpse with the others”. As with the author’s other series, this is not for the faint of heart, and gets pretty horrific… but it can also be very funny at times. Sometimes at the same time. As for Yulucia, her stepsisters may be a bigger issue going forward, as the older one seems to be the one person who sees her true self.

I hear that future volumes go even further off the rails, so I’m not sure where this will end up. For the moment, though, I’m happy to be following along.