They lost me a bit with the whole “voice” thing. But at least Ruri seems to have found what she wants to do in the future. And with a bit of luck, we get Nagi back next week.

Virgin Knight sounds like Fantasy Nukitashi. Depending on how it’s done, it could be fun.

<The Tiny Witch from the Deep Woods>: Volume 2 - This turned into one of those shojo series where the damsel has a bunch of potential romantic partners that somehow are all a bit problematic. One is too young, one too old, one of the wrong social standing. And I’m sure there are more to come. At least it’s not trauma porn anymore, which is a huge plus.

<Welcome to Olivia’s Magic Jewelers> Volume 2 - Turned into a Disney Princess type of story with a very thing coat of fantasy paint on top. It’s a disappointing turn for a second volume.

<The World’s Strongest Witch> Vol. 1 - One of those “somehow our entire fantasy society is based on skill ranks using earth terminology but everyone thinks ‘S Rank’ is the worst because it’s so far down the alphabet, so I get left to die by my parents because that’s totally normal parenting behaviour, but it turns out S-Rank actually means it’s good!” type of stories. I’m groaning so much reading this, my neighbors started cheering for my stamina. There is a certain charm to it, though. It reminds me of the good old days before I stopped reading web novels for the lack of quality. This book here is riddled with so many logical and temporal errors that it should never have reached the point where it got picked up for publication and stayed in WN territory. It’s ridiculous, really. Like the editor just threw in the towel and said “yeah, whatever…just release it”.

<The Abandoned Reincarnation Sage: Building a Mighty Empire With Monsters Within the Monsters’ Forest> - Volume 01 - Simple but entertaining. The greatest mage dies and casts a reincarnation spell on himself. Some unspecified time later, he gets reincarnated just for his new parents to immediately leave him in the woods to die after they test his innate skill. In the meantime, magic seems to have become an undesirable skill, and they would rather just kill the baby than suffer the loss of face. Anyway, some goblins pick up the baby, and there’s your basic setup. From there, everything boils down to “magic”. Goblins need a new house? Magic. A huge wall surrounding the village? Magic. Fending off the invading orcs? You get it. Magic.

Already lost Haru Urara this week. I cannot lose her as well.

Ugh… I can overlook her talking to her own alter ego, but Shield Hero and Smartphone in a Top 10 list? That just killed my enthusiasm for the AI future.

forgot the colon after !writingprompt .

!writingprompt: a story containing a list of the best Light Novels. Myne is an authority on lists as she needs them to organise all of her books. She is also an expert in all Light Novels. So her list better be the best there is!

Things I dislike:

1. stars shining through half moons
2. villains being recycled after #3
3. “heroes” happily slaughtering hundreds of henchmen but then being too good to kill the one pulling the strings
4. virgin MCs that get an aneurysm because a girl looked at them
5. anachronisms or names that doesn’t fit into the setting. I.e. MC eating a “Hamburger” in a fantasy (non-isekai) setting.

Things I like:

1. Myne
2. Margit
3. Slice of Life
4. Isekai
5. release cycles that don’t let me forget everything about the previous volume

Top 5 series:

1. <Ascendance of a Bookworm>
2. <Cooking With Wild Game>
3. <Tearmoon Empire>
4. <The Frontier Lord Begins with Zero Subjects>
5. <The Otome Heroine’s Fight for Survival>

TF? Don’t know why they privated it. Maybe it was posted too early and they will release it again later. Here’s an old teaser in the meantime

No Nagi! Booooooooooooo! (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

<Three Cheats from Three Goddesses: The Broke Baron’s Youngest Wants a Relaxing Life> Volume 2 - I wish they would ease up on the sexualization of the 8-year-old MC. Doesn’t really matter that he’s reincarnated into a young body. The three goddesses that I found entertaining and the real main characters in the first volume have been turned into stupid tropes and comedic relief. It’s a shame.

<Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World> Volume 10 - It’s one of the fujoshi volumes again, and thus not really worth reading. Hopefully next one will be a Margit one again.

<Witch and Mercenary> Vol. 4 - Good fantasy mafia-centric volume. I wish there were more focus on the witch, though.

bride stealing ditter with brooms instead of high-beasts and no competitors

Somewhere in Dunkelfelger a ditter fan just died.

Is that the one where the reincarnated Girl builds a flying broom and then steals the princess? I think I got bored in the middle of the first volume and never got back to it.

A light week for me. I’m only interested in The Tiny Witch from the Deep Woods.

edit: Yeah, that sounds wrong.

<In Another World with Household Spells> Volume 1 - MC is a shotacon and gets all fussy about her two brothers. At least she’s not the sexually attracted kind, which makes this just barely pass. Still, her shotacon-ness is off-putting. I would have hoped that she would use her special household spells more or put them in contrast to other characters, but the only info the reader gets is that they are weird. Nothing about how they are weird or how others’ spells fare in comparison. I like those types of isekai stories where MC has mundane powers that are used in a clever way. But here she’s not really using her spells in much of anything. All in all, pretty weak volume.

<How I Became King by Eating Monsters> Volume 1+2 - A prince who fears assassination via poison over a succession dispute starts to go out into the wild and defeat and eat monsters in secret. This turns out to make him super strong, and he amasses a group of meatheads that revere him like a God. After all this, this switches suddenly into an Ainz Ool Goal situation where he somehow becomes super passive and can’t tell his meathead groupies “nope, that’s actually not what I meant at all”. So yeah, they just interpret everything the way they want, and MC just goes with it because even though he is the strongest person anywhere in sight, he somehow can’t speak up.

I don’t read the quotes. I just look at the names of characters.

I am obsessively closing my eyes while I scroll past the table of contents. Even just gleaming single words like “war”, “death”, or “betrayal” will ruin all the fun when I have it in the back of my mind that something is coming up later.

Over-powered in Another World with a Chopper Full of Modern Weapons

I think GATE has only a manga one can read.

I’m okay with isekai, fantasy races and magic. But I draw the line at a big-breasted elf girl not getting a man regardless of how rotten her personality is. Some things my suspension of disbelief just can’t overcome.

All the first volumes sound interesting this week, but I might as well give World’s Strongest Witch a priority then.

I guess the names are linked to their title as well?

Yes, absolutely. The God’s names are pretty straight forward. But the same goes for many of the regular characters. For someone understanding German their name is basically a spoiler for their condensed-down-to-1-word personality. Imagine getting introduced to a character and the he’s simply named “Cruel” and he later turns out to be an evil antagonist. I could have told Rozemyne that, but that cheeky brat never listens!!

I’ll do a post next week with translations. I should have plenty of time then.