Light Novel Recommendations

[apr]

Finished reading Sword Oratoria vol 1 by Oomori Fujino. This is the first part of a spin-off series to the much more unfortunately named Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru darou ka, which I've been loving so far.

Unlike the original, this focuses on the hero's primary target of affection, a sword fighting girl who stands at the absolute pinnacle of the world's Adventurers. She's part of the elite Loki familia, whose team of dungeon crawlers have reached the deepest in the city, which gives the opposite perspective of the original's protagonist, who's just starting out.

I was curious about what was going on beyond the hedge, so to speak, but as usual, the gaiden format disappointed me. While I'm sure there's potential to make something fun of it, this first book suffers heavily from deja vu. Not only does it depict the same events as were already seen in the original work, but it's also hellbent on reintroducing the world and all of its details to its readers. Another negative factor is that I already know that all the characters will be fine, no matter how abominable the danger they face, because the original books are further down the timeline, and everyone appears happy and hale the next day.

Along with this absolute drain of tension, the author is also seemingly trying to keep the heroine's thoughts from becoming too apparent to the readers, in case it could ruin the mystique when the hero faces her in the original series. It keeps her a distant character, and a poor choice to base an entire storyline around, as everything becomes much less personal.

I'm told the sequels get significantly better, so I've already got volumes 2 and 3 on my shelf, but I feel a need to take a break from this for a bit, and explore something outside of fantasy. With the anime adaptation scheduled for April, I can't delay for too long, though.

[RED IV]

Guys started reading Desolate era by I Eat Tomatoes and it looks promising.I highly recommend this to fans of Coiling Dragon,Stellar Transformations and other great Wuxia novels

[Zefyris]

read the 2 volumes of Shinigami wo Tabeta Shoujo by Nanasawa Matari.

That's a very surprising novel. For starter, the MC could be considered as being part of the "evil side" of the war, since from what we see the opposite side seems (mostly) closer to what you would call good peoples than all those generals and strategists in her side who are just power hungry. Furthermore, she could be said to be at the very least as evil as them since she basically only cares about eating good stuff and killing rebels. She doesn't stop at killing civilian either if they helped rebels. She's a true butcher, a savage and unstoppable beast on the battlefield, and the soldier she leads are fanatics that believe in the final victory or their regiment and of their leader, blindly slaughtering anything she orders them to. You could say she's like a "dark Joan of Arc" in fact.

That's a very refreshing position for a MC, really. The strategies used are quite nice too, although a bit too simple. As the story goes on, even though the MC is unstoppable and her regiment mostly win, she fins herself more and more cornered since even though her regiment achieve successfully their task in the battle, the battles are more often lost than won. This brings up an overpowered character who feel more and more cornered even though she doesn't especially lose herself.

It was very interesting until the end. Shera was really a twisted character until the end lol. I like her two faces played during the whole story, of a young girl liking to eat with others, and of an implacable, unstoppable and crazy warmonger/butcher. That was played right by the author, who bring here the question of what is really a "hero" as well as what is a human, and what is a monster. That story studies the reaction of peoples around such a character in an interesting manner.

Truly a good story to read, really refreshing in the way it's made.
9/10
MAL link : http://myanimelist.net/manga.php?id=79169

[Zefyris]

I also read the 2 volumes of Yuusha, Aruiwa Bakemono to Yobareta Shoujo from the same author Nanasawa Matari.

To my utmost surprise, it's actually a prequel of Shinigami wo tabeta shoujo. It happens in the same world, in the free city of Art, which is the siege of the biggest religion on this continent, and happens around 8 years before the beginning of shinigami wo tabeta shoujo.
It features several characters who are also in the previous work, as well as several characters related to either events or important characters from the same work. This especially features Katarina's "reconstituted family" and explains why Katarina is so fascinated by heroes. It also explain several things previously left unexplained like the Shinigami's origins, and so on.

But lets leave aside the prequel side of this work, because the most interesting thing there isn't its role as a prequel, but the work as itself. If Shinigami wo tabeta shoujo was exploring the notions of "Hero" and "Monster" in one direction, Yuusha, Aruiwa Bakemono to Yobareta Shoujo is exploring it on the exact opposite side. Rather than having an "black" war hero followed blindly by her soldiers fanatics, this time we have a hero of justice, here to save humanity, yet humanity betrayed her by fear of her tremendous power. If Shera was a monster who was called "war hero", Yuusha (Hero) was a Hero who became called "monster" despite her righteousness. We could attribute the difference of fate between the two by the fact that Shera had the mysterious charisma necessary to attract and fascinate others whereas Yuusha was lacking it, I'd say.
While this work has the same theme, it is opposite in most way. While SwTS was all about large scale battles in open space, YABtYS is all about individual or small group fights and dungeon crawling in the depth of a single city. As said above, the heroes are opposite as well.


Anyway, this work is epic. The MC is ridiculously overpowered, making for epic battles. But this is deep, too, as the emotions of the MC who was rejected by everyone and lost everything, trying to cling onto her status of "Hero" as the last thing still keeping her from falling into folly and despair. Several encounters she makes during the story will make that "last fortress" vacillate more and more too.
Just like the previous work, this is really refreshing as this put heroes far stronger than the rest of the cast in a far more credible and interesting light than you'll find usually.
8/10
MAL link : http://myanimelist.net/manga/87295/Y...obareta_Shoujo

[Zefyris]

Looks like lately, I'm the only one using this thread~
Anyway, I read Biscuit Frankenstein from Akira. It's a single book long story that has two edition, one complete (which I own), and one with one chapter removed.
Akira got the 9th Sense of Gender Awards Grand Prize (2009) for it, which is only one of the many prize that genius author got.

synopsis

Spoiler for synopsis:

1999. The "end of the world" that was talked half in doubt since Nostradamus' prediction was finally proven wrong.
But unknown to the public, an abnormal phenomenon was starting to spread. A "Disease" which disturbs the normal cell division process, making young girls' body rot alive, slowly killing them. And a beautiful and grotesque being born from this disease, guided by a hapless fate, starts walking on the borderline between good will and ill will, with the wafting sweet scent of death.

Biscuit Frankenstein is a SF story that starts in 1999 and will follow the very peculiar MC over a 50 years span, as she meets people involved with her birth, peoples that got their life changed by the disease and so on. The MC is, like in a lot of Akira's works it seems, very unique and worth following all along. She's neither good nor bad, but rather, grey. Her sense of justice and her goal in life is both right, probably the best choice there is, yet again completely cruel and extremely twisted.
We follow her as she moves with a unique goal for those 50 years, meeting peoples that became twisted serial killers are even worse, without understanding clearly what her goal is, until everything is finally understood. And what a fitting end that was. This is almost revolting, like a lot of things in this story, yet right, and more importantly very like her.

Biscuit Frankenstein manages to revisit the myth of the Frankenstein's monster made from dead human's parts sewed together in a completely new light. This is very interesting to read. The book feature a lot of physiological, medical and biological explanations (the author clearly took the time to do his research~) that helps explaining the strange phenomenons that this disease is, and more importantly, what is fascinating is that Frankenstein monster herself. She stands right outside the limits of humanity both with her personality and body, both beautiful and frightening in body and mind. She is human, yet not, and more importantly, you clearly can feel that she's a woman, even if made of dead bodies. Judging by the criteria for the sense of gender awards, I can completely agree as to why that year they gave their biggest prize to a light novel, whereas they usually only give those to novels.

Biscuit Frankenstein stands at the top of the genre, distinguishing itself from other works by both its originality and quality. Akira brought us a masterpiece with this one, for me there's no doubt on that.
10/10 - first time in more than 300 volumes read that I'm giving a 10/10 for a one volume long LN. And it deserves it fully.
MAL link : http://myanimelist.net/manga/86089/Biscuit_Frankenstein

[Cosmic Eagle]

How does it compare to Itoh Keikaku's works?

[Zefyris]

I never heard about him. But I looked at it a little, and that sounds like works worth the try. I don't know how it compares with Akira's work.
Just comparing the awards, Akira has received more rewards than him, but I think awards that Itoh Keikaku received are more prestigious. Although, most of those awards are posthumous, which bring the question of how much impartial the jury choice was with those.
For the content itself, it will had to wait for a long time before I can my hand on some of those books.

[Cosmic Eagle]

Harmony is a pretty good read.


It's short but surreal and philosophical

[apr]

(Not exactly "light novel", but it's still related! Somewhat!)
Finished reading Watashi no Otoko by Sakuraba Kazuki. She's originally a light novel author, whose popular Gosick series got an anime adaptation a few years ago, but after the phenomenal A Lollypop or A Bullet unexpectedly reached a wider audience, she took the step out into mainstream fiction, eventually winning the prestigious Naoki Prize with this novel in 2008.

Told in chronologically reverse order, the story circles the twisted relationship between Hana and her adoptive father. The book opens when she's 24 years old and getting married, finally separating from this withering figure of a father, then each following chapter jumps a few years back in time, ending at the point where -- aged 9 -- her original family is swallowed by a tsunami, leading to the lonely little girl becoming adopted by a distant young relative.

It's immediately apparent to the reader that something is wrong with the way the two act together, a feeling that gradually rises to a very unsettling degree, and then manages to rise again and again. Bleak doesn't really begin to cover the sensation of reading this thing, and knowing there was a film adaptation last year, "How the hell did they turn this into a movie?" kept spinning in my head whenever I put the book down.

I don't really know what Sakuraba wanted to tell her audience with this novel, but I suppose I left it with a grudging, if frustratingly vague, understanding of how things turned out the way they did. Might be interesting to reread it in the "right" order some day.


Finished reading Sword Oratoria vol 2 by Oomori Fujino. As a gaiden, it continues to run a story parallel to the original DanMachi, at times briefly crossing paths with the hero of the primary work. It's still too impersonal for my taste, often reducing it to descriptions of long action scenes, but with the introduction of sufficiently powerful human rivals, the underlying plot is starting to get interesting. It's also nice to see more world building, shedding light on parts yet unexplained in the main storyline.


Finished reading Sword Oratoria vol 3 by Oomori Fujino. As previously mentioned, this is a gaiden to Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru darou ka, telling a parallel story focusing on a different group of characters, with some overlap whenever the heroine bumps into the hero.

So far it's felt like a collection of events depicted from the outside, which makes it feel less personal than the main series. This time, though, the author pulls in a few new characters who haven't shown up in the primary storyline, and since their fates are not set in stone, it finally gives this gaiden series some much-needed tension. Combined with deepening the underlying plot and mythos, the resulting volume is quite entertaining, and bodes well for future sequels. Even so, it isn't reaching anywhere near the heights of its big brother DanMachi, in spite of having a much better title.

Bit excited to see how the anime turns out when it starts airing on Friday.

[Kunagisa]

Read the first two volumes of Kamisama no Goyounin over the past month. First volume took forever to finish cause :reasons:; volume 02 was a "speed" read through that took 2 days or approx. around 10 hours (yeah not so speedy ...). Quite possibly my favorite (light) novel the year thus far. Hailed as the successor to Biblia for the MW Bunko throne. As a relatively unknown author, the book managed to grab almost 100k sales for its first volume over the span of a little bit more than a year. Compare to other books that just front-load 90% of their sales figure over the first month (often with 20k or less sales), a book's staying sales-power is a better indication for an interesting (not to be confused with good) read. As such, I jumped on the bandwagon and read the first volume and devoured the 2nd one right after. Must say I'm quite pleased. The story revolves around a 24 years old freeter who, due to life reasons, has strayed from his desire career path. Because of his connection to his grandfather, who has recently passed away, Hagiwara Yoshihiko has inherited the role of Steward of the Deities, hence the title of the series. The stories feature plethora of Shinto Gods and Goddesses; some of which you might be familiar, but most likely you're like me that hasn't heard any of them before; however, that doesn't stop the book from being absolutely heartwarming. At first, I wasn't sure if I like how humanized these deities are, since they're supposed to be omnipotent beings after all. Yet, as cliche as this sounds, I can't find myself being charmed by them not only by writing but also by setting. Deities draw their power from people's reverence; the less the worshiper and honest devotion, the less power they get; in turn, this not only affect their supernatural power, but also their own characters in various aspects. The author's father is actually a Shinto priest, to which Asaba gave great thanks for creation of this story. This I believe also contributes greatly to how polished the story is. People writing about subjects that they're most familiar with tend to give far superior results than just pure fantasy in most cases due to obvious inherent advantages. Personally, I especially like Hashihime and Suseribime's stories. Volume 2 might be slightly better than 1 because that's when the heroine gets introduced, but her arc isn't the best; volume 1 epilogue actually had me tearing up because I didn't expect that. Either way, the series definitely deserves its popularity and I urge people to try it. PS: Listening to Inari, Konkon, Koi, Iroha OST might increase your reading pleasure for this series .

[apr]

Finished reading Inaku Nare, Gunjou by Kouno Yutaka. It's another title from the new Shinchou Bunko Nex label that signed a bunch of light novel authors to write less light novelly books.

16-year-old Nanakusa is enjoying a pleasantly dull life on a remote island, where there's little more than a small town and a mountain. He woke up there three months ago, to find out that he was now stuck among the discarded people, until he could find what was lost. Such cryptic words didn't bother him much, because Nanakusa is a pessimist of the highest order, always expecting the worst to happen, and this seemed relatively mild.

One day, however, a girl appears in front of him, and turns his new life upside-down. It's Manabe, his childhood friend, and the world's most idealistic optimist. Unable to cope with her presence on the island, he's now determined to find the Witch who rules atop the mountain and convince her to get Manabe out.

Usually stories like this open up with the protagonist being thrown into a strange situation, but here we come in months after the fact, and it creates a calm, leisurely pace without urgency. As such, the mystery of the island is unwrapped almost as a casual side-effect of the relationship between the main characters. It's different and cozy and nice to read. More Young Adult than light novel, the dream-like island and philosophical nature of the mystery also set it apart from the Japanese titles I generally come across, but it's still fairly easy to read.

Didn't realize when I bought it that this was going to be a series, and while the sequel hasn't been announced yet, I'm looking forward to seeing more of this polar opposites couple.

[apr]

Finished reading Overlord vol 3-4 by Maruyama Kugane. While it's yet another version of "MMO turned into reality", I'm enjoying this series because of how different its point of view is. Usually we're following a young hero saving people out of the goodness of his heart, but here the protagonist remains disinterested in the inhabitants of the new world, thinking only of his own goals.

It's a premise that generates some unusual stories for a light novel. In the fourth book, the narrative primarily follows a race of lizard men, who faced with the threat of annihilation choose to unite their warring tribes and protect their people together. It's complete with a gathering of heroic warriors, a romantic side-story, and ends with an epic battle against an impossibly powerful army of death.

As the reader knows this evil foe is actually the protagonist of the series, it creates a peculiar dynamic, as on the one hand you want to cheer for the underdog to escape genocide, and on the other you're sort of hoping to see just how ridiculously overpowered the protagonist's horde can be.

It's not executed perfectly, with some awkwardly artificial lines coming out of female characters, but at the least it's very entertaining, and as a result I've ordered the remaining four volumes as well.

[apr]

Finished reading Boku wa Ashita, Kinou no Kimi to Deeto Suru by Nanatsuki Takafumi. Careful never to try anything dangerous, I decided to read this because it's yet another example of a light novel author getting successful with a more general novel. This particular title has been selling so steadily that it's been stuck on bestseller list for the past two months at least.

Takatoshi is a 20-year-old art college student on his way to school in Kyoto, when he spots a stunning woman on the train, and falls in love with her at first sight. Unwilling to lose her forever more, he musters up the courage to follow her off the train, and manages to ask her out. Much to his surprise, she accepts his proposition, and it's the beginning to sweet romantic days exploring life as a couple of lovebirds. Except for those random, slight hitches, where the girl seems to be prescient, accidentally slipping details she can't possibly know yet. And why is she always breaking into tears when they do something together for the first time?

The book title can be translated into something like "Tomorrow I will go on a date with the you of yesterday", which combined with the cover illustration kind of sort of somewhat gives the gimmick away. As a fan of all things time travel, this interested me to begin with, but reading it I couldn't quite lose the sensation that I'd picked up on what was going on before I was supposed to. It turns the romance bittersweet much too soon, and makes it difficult to want to keep reading. Luckily the prose is quick and easy to get through, so it didn't set me back for long.

The story works on a character and relationship level, for the most part, but the setting is so contrived and artificial that it's impossible to take it entirely seriously. The rules of the world the author paints are just so carefully tuned to construct this fateful romance that it feels like cheating. As such I'm reluctant to praise the novel for squeezing my heart a few times, when the emotional scenes do succeed.

[Zakoo]

Anybody read Kanae no Hoshi (from the author of Shakugan no Shana), how was it?

Same question for monku no tsukeyou ga nai love comedy, i find the manga interesting so I'm wondering how the LN is.

On my side, I'm reading Danmachi and it's quite nice, after finishing the lastest volume I plan to begin to read Next life, for once it seems a nice romance without any harem so I'm having tons of expectations for it.

[Zefyris]

IIRC Cosmic Eagle is reading it.

[apr]

Finished reading Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru darou ka vol 7 by Oomori Fujino. With the anime out, this title has gained worldwide fame because of a character's boob string, somehow getting articles in newspapers everywhere. Hopefully it will have a positive effect on book sales.

This time our hero wants to set a young prostitute free from the fetters of a jealous goddess of pleasure, putting most of the action in the city's red light district. As always, it's a fun and exhilarating ride, but at nearly 500 pages, some of the battle scenes feel quite drawn out. And with an ever-growing gallery of characters, some of the old friends end up with scant attention, particularly poor Ais who isn't seen at all throughout the book.

Picking prostitution as theme, the series also loses some of its innocence with this arc. I've regarded it as a pure adventure story so far, but this image clashes with the multitude of scenes where the protagonist -- who's still a child at 14 -- is the target of rape attempts. I suppose the culture of our time still considers sexual violation of men to be more humorous than horrifying, but I'm left flitting between smile and scowl reading about it.

Anyway, it's still good.

[apr]

Finished reading Overlord vols 5-7 by Maruyama Kugane. Sorry for repeating myself, but it's the story of a VR MMO player who discovers that the game has turned into reality, and he's now a max-level undead spellcaster in a fantasy world. The anime adaptation will be out in July, but the visual style is so comical that I have no hopes that it will be watchable, since the original is more dark and serious.

Books 5 and 6 combined to form one arc, where the series' protagonist barely features at all, instead following a member of his horde -- a large host of powerful NPCs who've come to life. The fifth book is pretty slow, mostly setting up a collision between this evil horde and a crime syndicate, but when it explodes into battle in the sixth book, it's very entertaining to behold. Especially seeing one of the top ranking adventure parties take on a middling horde monster, since their struggle just serves to highlight how absurdly powerful the eminent overlord must be.

Book 7, however, is where the author finally crosses the line he's been walking so carefully throughout the series. Whereas earlier conflicts have seen the protagonist face decidedly malicious opponents, in this book he willingly kills or causes the death of undeniably good people. And then the author rubs the reader's face in it with the epilogue. It can be argued that this has been long coming, with a growing indifference toward humans from the protagonist's side, now that he's been transformed into an undead skeleton lich, but while watching evil get crushed by greater evil is gleeful fun, there's a bitter aftertaste having seen innocents suffer the same fate.

From now on there are wildly different paths the author can take with the series. Will the protagonist sink deeper into darkness and truly take over the entire world, scorching the earth and leaving it filled with moving corpses? Or will he realize what he's becoming, and turn against his own horde, forced to defeat everything he has worked to build up? Or will we perhaps see the heroes of the world unite to fight him, finally turning the original protagonist into the true antagonist? So far there have been only hints of other players, mostly strewn across history, walking the land as living legends, but if they finally make an entrance, it could twist the story into something else completely.

All I know is that depending on how volume 8 turns out, I might have to give up on the series altogether, because it's unpleasant to read about unsympathetic characters for too long.

[apr]

Finished reading Knights & Magic vol 1 by Amazake no Hisago. Unsurprisingly, it's a popular web novel that got picked up by a light novel label and is now published in paper form.

A 28-year-old programmer, cherished by his software company for sliding in before deadline and saving projects, is on his way home one day when he is killed by a drunk driver. Through the wonder of reincarnation, he finds himself reborn in a fantasy world filled with monsters, where humanity fights for its territory using giant mechanical robots known as Silhouette Knights. They're powered by magic, and as our protagonist soon discovers, the method of control is eerily similar to computer source code. Using the amazing skills gained in his former life, the young hero now sets out to revolutionize warfare with brilliant magical algorithms.

Let me be frank: this is terrible. It places itself firmly in the bottom 1% of what I've read in the past few years. Not because the story is worthless, or the prose is terrible, but because the structure of the storytelling itself is so insanely boring that I wanted to throw the book out the window nearly every page. The author is so intoxicated with his lore that every trace of plot or characterization is drowned out by explanations on details of details in details. It's excruciatingly dull.

The author also has no trust in his readership whatsoever, so every single line of dialogue is followed by a paragraph or two explaining exactly why the character felt the need to say those words in particular, and what the consequences of uttering them will be. The main character is only developed through the praise of his surroundings, so he's left as a perfect doll for the author to move around in his little imaginary world, endlessly executing amazing feats through blazing intellect. Any chance for turning him into a real person is swept away by labelling him a "mecha otaku" who just loves big robots.

Reading it in Japanese, I'm also smothered by incomprehensible katakana fantasy names, which instantly makes it twice as bad. Maybe the series turns into something fun eventually, but I'm pretty unlikely to give it more of my time.

[GAOlivier]

Originally Posted by Kunagisa

That light novel sounds pretty nice. I'd like to read it, but can't find a (fan) translation anywhere. I'm new to these forums and saw the guidelines about posting the link to translations only once, but could you still direct me to where I can find it?
Or do you buy them and read them in Japanese?

Cheers

[Kunagisa]

Read Questers' Lyric of the Green Sunlight on the day it came out (thanks to a friend who bought it). For people who like OP protagonist curbstomping people, I apologize in advance as this will not be a book you'll be interested in. I haven't read any new LNs for quite a while (mainly because I guess my interest has been shifting to Light Literature); however, this title caught my interest because this author debuted by winning the 19th Ayukawa Tetsuya award (I've read the 22th winning title, which was amazing); so-bin being the artist is also a huge bonus. In addition to all that, MF Bunko J was pretty active about promoting this title, giving its own website before going on sale, with comments from various authors praising the book, which is much more effort than usual for the new series. Needless to say, I was pretty stoked about this. Thankfully, the book did not disappoint. The author, Aizawa Sako, intended this to be a TRPG style story. While I've never dabbled in this type of game, the story does remind me of something out of Secrets of Mana or Golden Sun etc. There isn't really a clear main quest so to speak, but for an introduction volume, there is great attention to build world setting such as culture, religion, magic (how mana functions), races and other small details. The overall reading experience was pretty coherent, cohesive, and flow nicely. Spoiler for some stuff: The main character is a "branchless" student from a magic academy, a nickname from the fact that he's pretty much a failure as student and couldn't reach a staff. One day, he decided to become an adventurer and make his living working various jobs instead much to his sister's displeasure. He arrived at the top quest "hub", which is literally a pub, but got kicked out cause he seemed so talentless. Before leaving, he did end up taking on a quest given by a little girl who wants to find her sister. The story this time also has an investigative/mystery feel to it, but given it's not a proper mystery novel, there are less stringent requirements for "fairness" and logic. Most of the information surface as the main character investigate and gain more clues; the conclusion was not some crazy twist, but certain revelations in the end were entertaining. The biggest surprise to me were the sexual scenes. To be frank, they were quite erotic. I'm not saying this is a R-18 novel or something with high focus on fanservice like Highschool DxD, but something about these mystery writers (like Shimada Soji) that manage to present mature scenes in a way that I find more subtle yet more arousing. Either way, surprising but enjoyable read. PS: Seems like this already has its own twitter as well. Also, has been sold out on Amazon for the 3rd day now (understocking might be a valuable marketing strategy, but I don't think they do that for new books ... maybe). PPS: Would be nice if the author use 理不尽 less, but I guess he was trying to hammer a point.

Some other books that I enjoyed that are technically not LN but anime related, or are LNs but don't feel like going into great depth about.

Spoiler for list:

From left to right:

1. All 3 books are great!!! Kitayama still got it! The whole detective classification system and all the tricks mysteries might even surpass the original DR games even.
2. Direct continuation from the first one. There are more questions answered (like why Kaisei has always to hide from Yasaburou), more characters introduced (some killed though), and more fun than the first (more Benten!!!). What's even better is there will be a 3rd one, gotta wait even longer than usual I suppose. I hope PA Works eventually animate this too. Uchouten Kazoku's truly amazing. With this second volume I say I like this even more than　奇遇ですね先輩～.
3. From author of Mushi-Uta, fairly interesting, but it's split into 2 volumes, and the second I have not read.
4. Can I just say finally? (both in terms of me actually getting around to reading it and relationship advancement within the volume)

I think I'm just getting lame in mind and more picky, haven't been able to find too many interesting books. Then again, this thread has been pretty dead too. Maybe it's not just me?