FUNA

The beginning of this book reminds readers that the princess Mile (who was then Adele) saved is still looking for her and thinks that she's the avatar of a goddess. The bulk of the story has nothing to do with that, however. Instead, the focus is on Mile's new life as a hunter, taking on jobs with her all-girl party, the Crimson Vow.

The girls decide to start taking on more difficult jobs in order to test their skills and gain more experience. Just figuring out which situations are difficult for them and which are easy is helpful. However, then Reina proposes that they gain experience fighting human opponents - fighting monsters is one thing, but what if they can't bring themselves to go all out against other humans when necessary? And so they find a promising looking merchant escort job.

Volume 1's underwear and chest size conversations irked me, so I was glad that those pretty much disappeared in this volume. It was nice to see the girls figure out how to deal with a client who attempted to cheat them, and I liked that they were focused on becoming better hunters, supporting each other, and working through things as a group. Another party of relatively young guys tried to convince them to join them, and it wasn't even vaguely tempting for any of them. The complete lack of romance (so far) is another way this series stands out from a lot of other recent light novel releases.

Unfortunately, everything in this volume was either bland or predictable (or both). I could see the revelations about Reina's past coming from a mile away. None of the battles were particularly interesting, and the escort job was downright boring and felt like it could have come from just about any light novel series featuring the adventures of an RPG-like party.

This series seems to have achieved Mile's goal: it's truly average. The writing is relatively decent, and the third person POV is a blessing in the sea of first person POV light novels. None of the characters really stand out, but none of them are particularly annoying either. The premise feels like it's starting to take a back seat to the generic fantasy storyline and setting - no signs yet that the author plans to do anything interesting with the fact that this world's "magic" is actually the result of highly advanced nanotechnology.

I just scanned the descriptions and some of the reviews of the later volumes in the series, and I didn't see anything that intrigued or excited me. It's just a very average fantasy series, albeit with a super-powered heroine rather than a super-powered hero. I don't own any other volumes in this series and don't think I'll be buying any more.

Extras:

A few pages of full-color illustrations, black-and-white illustrations throughout, an afterword by the author announcing that the series with being adapted as a manga, and a side story in which Mile takes on a solo job as a tutor.

The illustrations prompted me to nickname the girls the "Murder Marshmallows" - the style is very sparkly and cute, which was occasionally at odds with the way the girls acted, killing monsters left and right, advocating for bandit killing (Reina), and cheerfully leaving a merchant who tried to force them to work for free to potentially die (he didn't, but still).

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (mehr)

In Japan, Kurihara Misato was a prodigy, good at everything she tried...except making friends. Although she was never bullied, she could never seem to get close to anyone. Then, when she was 18, she was killed saving a child from being hit by a car. After her death, she appeared before a young man who called himself "God," who wished to thank her for saving the child by having her reborn in a new world with whatever abilities she desired. Misato's wish surprises him: she wants her abilities to be average.

And so she is reborn as Adele von Ascham, daughter of Viscount Ascham, her station in life exactly halfway between the lowest and highest possible. It seems that God misunderstood her request to be "average." His definition of "average" with respect to her magical and physical abilities turns out to be similarly skewed. This puts Adele in a bit of a bind. How is she supposed to come across as average if she's actually ridiculously powerful? This particular volume covers her new life from age 10 to 12, beginning at Eckland Academy, a school for lesser nobles and talented commoners, and continuing on to her work as a newbie hunter (basically, an adventurer).

The heroine goes by three names throughout this book: Misato (her life in Japan, which we see very little of), Adele (her life at Eckland), and Mile (when she becomes a hunter). I plan to mostly refer to her as Adele to keep this review from becoming too confusing. And yes, this is one of those very rare light novels that's actually written in the third person. Yay!

I've seen reviews that complain that Adele is a Mary Sue, and considering the premise, I'm not sure what else they expected. I mean, that's the entire point of this series. God misinterpreted Adele's request, and as a result she was reborn ridiculously overpowered. Similarly to Touya, the hero of In Another World With My Smartphone, there was almost nothing she couldn't do. However, unlike Touya, she actually had a goal in life, and her powers interfered with that goal.

Or so she thought. I really hope that, at some point, Adele realizes that what she actually wants is friends and that the ones she's managed to find so far won't necessarily turn away from her once they realize just how overpowered she is.

I was torn on the way FUNA handled the book's friendship aspects. On the one hand, I liked that there was so much deliberate focus on female friendship. Adele acquired groups of close friends at both Eckland and the Hunters' Prep School, and her method of bonding with them tended to involve teaching them useful magical skills based on her secret knowledge of how the world's "magic" really worked. It was nice. On the other hand, the various friendships felt oddly superficial (possibly because the characters weren't all that well-developed?), and I hated how often breast size and undergarments came up. Breast size literally played a part in the start of one of Adele's friendships (the girl made friends with her because Adele's flat chest made her chest look less flat by comparison). Just...no.

My favorite things about this book were the humor (Adele was truly terrible at pretending to be average, and the results were usually entertaining) and the way Adele politely but unflinchingly put rude people in their place. The classmate who assumed she'd be his girlfriend just because he said he liked her, the guy who shouted questions at her like she owed him answers, the other classmate who repeatedly challenged her to fights because his pride was hurt by the fact that she was better than him. It was fun watching her deal with all of them.

Unfortunately, this had a lot of the same problems that many other light novel series have, and although I plan on reading the next volume, I suspect I'm going to burn out on this series fairly quickly. Most of the characters aren't that interesting, and although the premise resulted in some fun moments in this first volume, it won't be able to carry a whole series. Also, the writing was a bit dry and had a tendency to dwell on details that weren't important to the story and didn't add much to the setting. In fact, after the initial infodumping about how this world worked, there wasn't much real world-building at all - other than occasional interjections from the nanomachines, this world looked and acted like most other generic isekai fantasy worlds. FUNA could potentially do some interesting things with this world, which was created by God as sort of an experiment and then abandoned, but my overall experience with light novels tells me that I probably shouldn't hold my breath.

Extras:

Three full-color illustrations, two of which are double page spreads, black-and-white illustrations throughout, a couple extra sketches at the end, an afterword by the author, and three bonus stories. The first bonus story is all about Adele's underwear woes. In the second bonus story, Adele attempts to invent natto, which resulted in me realizing that this is one of the few light novels where the main character doesn't introduce some sort of food, game, item, etc. from their old world to people in their new world. In the third story, one of Adele's classmates declares that he's going to make her his woman. Adele is not nearly as happy about this as he'd expected her to be.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (mehr)