Sci-Fi series seems to have a small resurgence. Maybe this is the new trend for the next few years.

<Cooking with Wild Game> - Volume 34 by EDA - ★★★★☆, 181 MynePages™ - The main story was very short this time around, and the remainder of the volume was filled with side/bonus stories. From those, I was only interested in one of them, so this volume gets a point docked.

<Worthless at Home, Whiz to the World> - Volume 1 by kimimaro - ★★★☆☆, 104 MynePages™ - I think I’ve read the same story a couple of times already, but luckily in this rendition the MC isn’t quite as oblivious to his own strength as usual. Sure, there are the usual shenanigans, but at least the thought of “Hey, might I actually be quite strong compared to others?” pops up in his head. I take that as a win for the series. The obsessive bro-con sisters might also be a turn-off. For my taste, they are right on the edge of mildly entertaining and off-putting.

Worthless at Home, Whiz to the World - Volume 2 by kimimaro - ★★★☆☆, 103 MynePages™ - Pretty much more of the same as the first volume, with the only exception being that he has to convince a different sister. Since he has 5 of those, I can imagine how this series will play out.

Worthless at Home, Whiz to the World - Volume 3 by kimimaro - ★★★☆☆, 101 MynePages™ - Okay, I have to ask: who the fuck thought it was a good idea to put a color illustration at the beginning of the book that spoils the big twist happening at the end of the story? It’s like putting Darth Vader’s “No, I am your father” revelation into the opening crawl. Also, by now it’s clear that this is following the 1 sister per volume formula.

Worthless at Home, Whiz to the World - Volume 4 by kimimaro - ★★★☆☆, 96 MynePages™ - Another sister checked off. One more to go. I still wonder if the series will continue after the last sister and find a new plot device, or if it’s finished after that.

Woo! New Cooking with Wild Game. Good week.

<Reincarnated as a Poor Farmer in Another World: I’ll Use My Modern Knowledge to Build My Own Kingdom> - Volume 1 by Cancellara - ★★★☆☆, 164 MynePages™ - Very simple story, but good enough for an evening. Characters take his unique powers a bit too nonchalantly. Would be nice if they even questioned his common-sense-breaking powers from time to time instead of just accepting them as is.

<The Tiny Witch from the Deep Woods> - Volume 4 by Yanagi - ★★★☆☆, 189 MynePages™ - Filler volume. It was okay, but I’ll have forgotten it in 2 days.

<Al the Adventurer: That Magic Shouldn’t Work!> - Volume 1 by Lemon - ★★★★☆, 224 MynePages™ - Good new series. While nothing special, it was very entertaining. One nitpick is that the reasoning the author comes up with to push the plot in certain directions is a bit flimsy at times. It also has a nice setup for the next volume, so I’m looking forward to that.

She professed herself the pupil

That series was not for me. There was a similar series that I read at roughly the same time and I liked that one better. Something like Ultimate Last Boss Queen or something, like that IIRC.

Weakest tamer

The frist 1-2 volumes were entertaining enough but then I lost interest completely during the 3rd. Not bad, but couldn’t hold my attention.

Spice and Wolf

A classic. The Holo figurine on my shelf is smugly suggesting that you have better taste than me. Well, not really, but I can almost hear her comment anyway.

Can I interest you in <Cooking With Wild Game>? I’m not sure if I mentioned it here already, but that’s the one I always recommend someone coming from Bookworm. The plot itself is very different, but the core elements are all the same:

• Non-op MC that builds connections based on their earth knowledge (shampoo and books for Myne, cooking techniques and recipes for Asuta). No special power, no isekai cheat skills, nothing except what they know.
• slow-paced story that focuses on individuals and their relationships more than big world-changing plot devices. (gaining the trust and help of MC’s peers instead of “and then the demon lord stole the princess”)
• a class divide at the core of the plot (commoners vs. nobles vs. archdukes in Bookworm and forrest people vs. town people vs. nobles in Wild Game)
• a cast of supporting characters that is as interesting to read about as the main cast. Even more so than in Bookworm.
• The stakes are starting very low, but MC’s actions are ripples growing to involve ever larger plot points.

I highly recommend it to everyone who isn’t looking for fast-paced action.

If you’re looking for something funny, I recommend <Tearmoon Empire>, which isn’t as good anymore since the translator change, but man, those first 8 (or was it 9?) volumes sure had some of the wittiest prose I’ve read in light novels.

Looking for something with an interesting premise? <Zilbagias the Demon Prince: How the Seventh Prince Brought Down the Kingdom> would be my pick there. The basic premise is that a hero who goes on a suicide mission to kill the demon lord is killed in said mission by said demon lord. The fates are cruel, though, and the hero gets reincarnated as the 7th son of the demon lord. He is now set to destroy the demon kingdom from the inside. Which is already unique enough, but to make things more interesting, it turns out that many of those demons are genuinely likable. To the point where I’m rooting more for the demons than for the humans as a reader. And the psyche of MC is fucking torn to shreds. MC has to come to terms with questions like “do I kill those human POWs to make my own standing inside the demon hierarchy stronger?”. And those are just the simple ones. It’s extremely dark, which isn’t normally my kind of tea, but the premise keeps me looking forward to every new volume. I need to know how this will resolve at the end.

For fluffy, I like <By the Grace of the Gods> (got one anime season a few years back but the adaptation was only okay-ish) and <The Frontier Lord Begins with Zero Subjects> (currently airing, the first episode was a bit rushed, and exposition got hamfisted). Both have this nice low-stakes comfy feel with the MC’s building something up from nothing and doing some adventuring on the side as a change of pace. Grace of Gods did fall off in the last couple of volumes, but Frontier Lord is still going strong.

If you want something non-light novel (tsk…) but still very much in the same style, then you could give Robert Asprin’s Myth Adventures Series a go as a palate cleanser.

To my knowledge its the first 5 volumes adapted in the anime. So you’re getting new content beginning with volume 6.

<The Saga of Tanya the Evil> - Volume 1 by Carlo Zen - ★☆☆☆☆, 270 MynePages™ - I love the anime and especially Tanya, but the LN is so boring to read that it’s hurtful. I was forcing myself to continue because of the anime, but I had to drop it at 75%. Just couldn’t do it. It would probably take me another week to finish the last 25%. It’s a shame, but I’m just going to enjoy the second season of the anime instead.

<History of the Kingdom of Orcsen: How the Barbarian Orcish Nation Came to Burn Down the Peaceful Elfland> by Kyoichiro Tarumi - ★☆☆☆☆, 166 MynePages™ - This reads like an officer’s manual on WW1 military logistics. The author is gushing for chapters on chapters about stuff like the size of warehouse bay matching the size and height of supply wagons. Or the procurement of produce to supply an army with MREs, complete with a detailed list of how much a soldier gets.

The Orcsen Army has determined that each soldier deployed in the field should be supplied with the following daily:

Rye Bread: 3.3 pounds, or hardtack: 2.4 pounds

Potatoes or vegetables: 3.3 pounds

Pork or processed pork: 3.2 ounces

Beef, processed beef, or other processed meat: 8.5 ounces

Beef tallow or dehydrated vegetables: 3.2 ounces

Sauce: 1 ounce

Marmalade or honey: 14 ounces

Beer: 0.2 L, or wine: 0. 2 L, or liquor: 0.05 L

Coffee: 0.5 ounces

The entire fantasy theme is just a very, very thin veneer. The author just took some WW1 military otaku fan-fic, replaced the word “German” with “Orcsen” and put some fantasy lines every couple of pages to say it’s a fantasy LN. I would say there is about 3-4% of fantasy novels, and the rest is a military logistics circle-jerk about wheel sizes of light supply wagons and ammunition caliber sizes.

Dropped at 68% since there was literally no story here after the first chapter.

<The Frontier Lord Begins with Zero Subjects: Volume 14> by Fuurou- ★★★★☆, 140 MynePages™ - A twin heavy volume, so I wonder why they’re not on the cover.

<To Another World… with Land Mines!> - Volume 13 by Itsuki Mizuho - ★★★☆☆, 251 MynePages™ - Please J-Novel fire your editors and hire someone who actually proofreads your novels. I don’t even care about the occasional typo or a missing space here and there, but if I have to reread sections just to understand what was possibly the intended word, then I’m close to dropping a book. For example, they have a fantasy crop called “notato” (yes, really creative, I know), but in the volume, there are parts where “notato” was clearly auto-corrected to other words. When they suddenly start talking about “potatoes,” I can understand what they are actually talking about easily enough. I get annoyed, but it’s not too bad. But when they suddenly talk about “notation”, this fucks up my reading flow when sentences suddenly don’t make any sense anymore. Still no landmines by the way.

deleted by creator

Sounds good. I hope it gets an official translation.

What’s really fascinating is that I read through the entire thing without dropping it. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion. You don’t want to see it, but you can’t look away either.

A nice week with Land Mines, Frontier Lord, and Tiny Witch.

<Witch and Mercenary> Vol. 6: Part 2 by Chohokiteki Kaeru - ★★★☆☆, 136 MynePages™ - Finally some witch action in this volume, but there were a lot of fighting scenes so that sucks.

<The Disfavored Prince Is a Genius Alchemist: All I Want Is to Spoil My Little Siblings> - Volume 01 by Umee - ★★☆☆☆, 226 MynePages™ - It’s more palace intrigue than creating alchemy, and the end is extremely rushed and resolved too neatly.

<Starting on Hard Mode: God Levels, Got Problems> Volume 1 by ririnra - ★☆☆☆☆, 126 MynePages™ - Terrible prose, shitty and formulaic plot, and somehow even worse soyboy MC. Apart from the usual Japanese self-insert passive- and timidness, he is also describing himself as an anime, manga, and light novel otaku but doesn’t understand what a girl means when she asks him to form a party <- complete with the usual stuttering and overreaction because uh-u-uh-uhh a g-g-g-girl talked to me?!?!

“A party?” I repeated. She looked deadly serious, but my response came out flat because I hadn’t fully grasped what she meant. The first thing that came to mind was a birthday party. But inviting a stranger to a celebration would just be creepy. That’d be straight-up flirting…or worse.

This “otaku” also speaks to a girl with animal ears and a tail, and when she introduces herself, she tells him her name and that she is a beast girl. We then get this banger of inner monologue:

Right. Beastgirl. Unfortunately, I had no idea what that meant. It was probably common knowledge in this world, but I was an outsider.

Let me remind you, he’s supposed to be an otaku, is looking straight at the beast girl in question, already has commented on the ears and tail, and still is stupefied about what in the world a beast girl could be. It’s the type of MC that’s so infuriating that he makes me root for the monsters. Or suicide.

Oh, and the title is also a lie. General power levels in the world are described as strong when someone is in the 300s in one stat (yes, this series is using video game logic), and MC gets reincarnated with 10000 in every stat. So, no “hard mode” anywhere in sight.

Just because it’s so much fun, let’s put some more quotes:

I’d turned my eyes away in time, but the instant she’d pulled off her top, I’d still caught a glimpse of— No. Stop. Don’t think about it! Thankfully, I hadn’t seen anything beyond that. I’d only managed to cling to my last shred of sanity thanks to quick reflexes and, apparently, very high stats.

That’s right. Seeing a boob would drive him insane, apparently.

<Dahlia in Bloom: Crafting a Fresh Start With Magical Tools> Volume 12 by Hachi Komada - ★★★★☆, 219 MynePages™ - Typical Dahlia volume. This time, with a heavy emphasis on the relationship between Jonas and his stepfather.

How could you ask that? Making me choose! It’s like asking Myne or Rozemyne?

Rozemyne. Easy.

1st - The Happy go lucky - Kumoko

See? The early volumes are clearly the best.

Let me ask this way: Who do you like better? Kumoko or White?

Spider was really great for my taste in the beginning, but then there was some sort of shift in the plot (just keeping it vague here, but you will know what I mean once you reach that point), after which I lost interest completely. But those initial Kumoko getting stronger volumes were 10/10.

I think that I will skip Agents of the Four Seasons for now. I liked Violet Evergarden well enough, but the Agents anime didn’t really click with me.

New main line Dahlia. Nice.

<Proud to Be the Villainess> Volume > by Kuga Huna - ★☆☆☆☆, 144 MynePages™ - This was the most egregiously nonsensical novel I’ve ever read.

<Her Royal Highness Seems to Be Angry> Vol. 1: The Reincarnated Princess and an Ancient Power by Kou Yatsuhashi - ★★★☆☆, 133 MynePages™ - Likable MC that’s only really registers things that are of interest to her. Like “what, people trying to bully me? Who cares, look over there is something interesting”. The prose is very readable.

Her Royal Highness Seems to Be Angry Vol. 2: The Spirit King’s Visit by Kou Yatsuhashi - ★★★☆☆, 169 MynePages™ - They invented a new word here: “Knightlings” for children of knight families. That’s hilarious, and I don’t know why I haven’t heard that before.

Her Royal Highness seems to be angry Vol. 3 – The Spirit King´s Visit by Kou Yatsuhashi - ★★★☆☆, 153 MynePages™ - I wonder when the Royal Highness will finally get angry? I hope it will be epic. In this volume, there is one instance where she gets a bit annoyed, but no anger yet.