I’ve been on the 15 page-per-day schedule for five days now and it’s just destroying me. Compared to the book I read last, this one has smaller font and a lot more text per page. I’m probably looking up words at the same rate, but more words equals more lookups…it’s taking me about five minutes per page, which feels shockingly slow (and works out to an hour and a half of reading for this book alone!). Crucially, even though I’m enjoying the story and writing, I’m finding myself drained by just finishing my daily quota.
So I’m switching to the 11-page pace (actually more like 10 once I factor in what I’ve already read). Hopefully this will be a little easier.
Sooo, over the past few days, I’ve been thinking that I should really catch up with all those book clubs, right. So of course I read 乙女ゲーム[…] volume 6 instead.
Now that I’ve read it, I feel like volume 5 makes a bit more sense.
It was a good way to make a transition, since we have now reached a new game! FORTUNE LOVE II! Set one year later at the ministry of magic. New characters! More routes! The evil 悪役令嬢 is back from exile to get revenge of our lovely protagonist マリア and she even got black magic powers! Only death will stop her. And boi will she die.
Except of course none of this really happened since カタリナ just caught all the characters from the previous game like they are pokemons. Still, her visions (?) of the second game and the correlation between scripted events and real (?) life made her fear that, regardless, she may still have only 破滅 flags waiting for her.
This volume focuses on introducing said new characters and send her new team on their first mission [redacted, because now that people actually read the book, I would feel bad spoiling it for them even by accident].
My ebook edition also had an extra story at the end which felt entirely unnecessary, but anyway
Now, my main beef with the story so far is that those visions feel very weird. I understand that, plotwise, she has to know in advance what the game will be about (otherwise she wouldn’t know and thus not worry about 破滅 flags). However, those scenes are very different than any sort of magic we have seen so far. Arguably, she had something similar with ソフィア the first time that she got attacked by black magic, but it’s still different. Here, she is watching through the eyes of her old friend (who got reincarnated as ソフィア as far as we know). Is it from ソフィア’s untapped memories? Actually that could work I guess. It’s still extremely convenient. Also, why did that not happen before? Oh well.
I still had a good time overall
Edit: volume 7 is back to calling the game FORTUNE LOVER. I wonder why the R disappeared in volume 6.
I’m almost finished with volume 1. I may return to read volume 2, but next book is gonna be 青春ブタ, since I have the vocab list for that as well and want to add more words to Anki
Does the story develop a bit more? So far it’s been fun but getting a bit repetitive Always following the same pattern of: Person with some insecurities/problems → Katarina cheers them up → “Ahh, Katarina-sama best. I feel so warm.” → Repeat same thing from other person’s view → This x4 with different persons… Really hoping for some plot advancement later.
Well, erm, two days later, I am done with volume 7 of 乙女ゲーム[so on and so forth], and it was really nice! Probably my favorite in the series so far.
Romance takes a sit back (boo) so that plot can happen (yay!)… and I’m probably not going to say more than that, at least not until someone else finishes this part, then all spoiler hells will break loose.
Oh, and I’m just going to add to what I was saying last time, once again, the dream sequences
happened only near ソフィア so she must be the catalyst. The only remaining question is if she is doing it consciously or not.
Ugh, these spoiler tags are so frustrating. I’m still at volume 1 (around 50%), and I’m sooo curious about what you wrote about further volumes
But it’s good to know you consider them increasingly interesting at least
Made it past 250 for manga volumes for the year and still on track to meet my goal. I’m not so very far from finishing ハイキュー and catching up to published volumes of 約束のネバーランド, so it’ll be interesting to see what I turn to when that’s over. Other than book club stuff I’ve pretty much paused everything else while I read these two series. Will I pick those back up? Will something new capture my brain?
For novels, I am reading too many things. I’m still technically reading こころ, I guess… but haven’t touched it in weeks so putting that aside, I’m reading three for book clubs, plus two on my own: 魔法使いハウルと火の悪 and then the first Re:ゼロ because my brain is fatally weak to book clubs and it was like, couldn’t you catch up, and so I sped through about half the first book before realizing, no, I can’t, and probably don’t want to*, lol. But I’ll likely finish the first one at least. If I ever start reading Danmachi I’m going to have to drop out of all book clubs and block myself from the forums. (Not that Danmachi is bad or anything, just that I don’t have a desire to read it and doing so anyway would be a real sign that I have lost my last shred of book club resistance and must excise the problem in its entirety or perish.)
I guess I am not reading that many novels, but with three for book clubs now and two for personal reading when I only usually read one, it feels like a lot. After I finish one or the other of the personal books, I am hoping to go back to just one non-book club novel at a time.
(eta: * because of the great time and effort it would take)
Well, I’m not as extreme as that, but I haven’t read anything book club related this week (which, arguably is only beginning, but I would usually be done with some of the lighter stuff by now, like the manga and Kiki). Also I kinda cut my participation on the forum. it’s stupidly high to begin with, so even the cut down version is still pretty active, but anyway
Oh, how far in the story are you? Because there’s one part where the only reason I pushed through was that I was Internet-less without any other book on hand (it got better though).
Success! I shall keep corrupting everyone’s soul.
In many ways, the first two volumes, especially the first volume, are different from the rest of the series. They were written as a hobby and a complete story on the 小説家になろう website. Once it got picked to be an actual professional light novel, there was a need for the story to keep going, which was a little bit awkward for the author I guess. But not only did a plot line emerge, the skills of the author also improved. [I wanted to say more but somehow cannot make this spoiler-free]
Ummm, I’m 26% in. He went home because his dad’s sick but then came back, and then he and 先生 went on that walking trip and 先生 said the weird stuff about money that the main character didn’t understand. I think that’s where I left off, but it’s been a while and I don’t remember clearly. I don’t think I’ve hit the part you’re talking about, but that doesn’t bode well for my future, lol. This is a book where I need it to be the only non-book club book I’m reading, I think.
I shall keep corrupting everyone’s soul.
The other day at work I was trying to explain the 異世界 glut to a coworker, and at the end she asked for an example she could read. I haven’t read or watched barely any of them, so I demurred, but was telling her about how when my brain was utterly decimated by work the only thing I could get myself to read was (villainess flags) and she was like I’LL TAKE THAT ONE … and we have a copy in English at our library, so that’s happening. The soul corruption is contagious. I told her to have low expectations but she liked the idea of it not being taxing considering the world right now~
I have also been thinking I should spend a little less time on the forums, too, on top of not joining any more book clubs~ So far I have translated neither of these ideas into effort to attain them.
The story of a reincarnated gamer pursuing her villainous lady love at a fantasy girls’ academy!
Ordinary office worker Oohashi Rei has just woken up in the body of the protagonist of her favorite girls’ otome game, Revolution. To her delight, the first person to greet her is her favorite character, Claire Francois–who just so happens to be the main antagonist of the story. Now, Rei is determined to do what the game never allowed: romance Claire instead of one of the male leads. But how will her villainous lady love react to that?!
That’s way outside of the range of things I usually read, but maybe I’m being prepd up by 乙女ゲーム. What with カタリナ going ”本当、マリアいい子すぎる。もう攻略対象には渡さず私が嫁にもらいたい。" (マリア is the main character of the game).
Oh, hey, I read that a while ago and it was surprisingly good The spoiler free version of why is that it started out pretty stereotypical but got surprisingly serious, in a good way(while still keeping some of the comedy elements though).
I also wouldn’t wouldn’t be surprised if the author has personal experience (with the LGBTQ+ stuff, not the isekai part. I assume not, at least)
Always following the same pattern of: Person with some insecurities/problems → Katarina cheers them up → “Ahh, Katarina-sama best. I feel so warm.” → Repeat same thing from other person’s view → This x4 with different persons… Really hoping for some plot advancement later. 
the rest of the series, though… didn’t live up to my expectations.
