Whoops. 
The scare was unintentional; hopefully you enjoyed the book!
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I did! Much more than I would have without the extra spice, I assume.
It was hard at times, but the adrenaline rush was pretty sweet once I was done with it.
Edit: Oh, also that book pushed me above the 100000 pages mark! Standing at 100187 right now.
I guess 106 is the next goal 
Remind me in 63 years.
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I just finished the first volume of 86. I knew nothing about it, just that it was recommended in the advanced book club as SF (and I like SF).
I grabbed the first 3 volumes for dirt cheap when they were discounted plus a rare 20% off coupon I got from booklive. But then, it just kept rotting in my 積読 pile for almost a year, until the other day, when I noticed that audible has the audiobook.
I thought using a light novel as the thing I listen too on my commute would be fine… I was wrong. That series is not audiobook friendly. First of all, the author has a lot of custom furigana, especially for the types of enemies. The first time a custom reading comes across, the narrator reads the furigana first, pause, then the actual kanji. However, every further occurrences only get the furigana.
When you see something like 斥候型 (アーマイゼ), the kanji remind you what the thing was. But with just アーマイゼ, I am left thinking “well, it’s one of those things”. That, plus the light novel-ish tendency to use uncommon words made a lot of fight scenes extremely confusing.
I ended up tuning out during the fights and instead checking the book later 
Overall, I’d say it was fun. The story felt fairly standard, with boilerplate 少年漫画 characters (I feel like I have reached the point where every light novel I come across is just a variation of something I have read before 
) but it was not bad. Maybe it’s because I was listening rather than reading, but I didn’t come across annoying fan service either… until the あとがき where the author spent an unreasonable amount of time talking about how much one of the main character’s garter belt is エロ可愛い…
Well, joke’s on him her, I didn’t see the illustrations.
Anyway, I’m considering listening to Cop craft next (I also know nothing about it, it just happened to be the default image used by @Raionus for Floflo/koohi so it caught my attention while I was scrolling through the Audible catalog).
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I would love for you to read a volume of A Certain Magical Index just to see your reaction to the MC. It’s an extremely highly rated LN series, but the MC is pretty stereotypical in my mind. (The spinoff A Certain Scientific Railgun is much more my thing.)
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On her 
The author is pretty interesting; I remember they have an unhealthy obsession with warfare machinery or something. Definitely on my to read list! Just hesitant to tackle all that mountain of scifi/war vocab
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I’ve only been reading the manga versions of both, but yeah, I quite agree. I’ve been reading both mostly because I feel like I need to in order to actually get all the context, but ugh Index is so hard to follow. (Plus, despite being the title character, Index herself is barely ever involved in story arcs.)
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Well, on her, then.
TIL that あさと is a gender neutral name (I know a guy with that name IRL, and with the content of the あとがき I got strongly biased… but it gives me hope that there won’t be fan service in the future either!)
It’s not that much of an issue, as most SF words can be understood from their kanji (much harder with audio only, though). However, the author likes her fancy words as well, which is more of an issue.
The beginning of the first volume is a bit of an info dump about the world, too, which made me give up around 5%-ish a few months ago.
Not going to lie, that’s one good looking dude. His appearance accounts for 95% of my interest in the book at this point.
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For some reason, my local library does not have the first volume (unclear if it got destroyed, misplaced or stolen). It’s also not on audible, so, hmm, not sure when I will check it out.
I’ll keep it in mind, though.
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I’ve had my eye on this one for… basically the same reason, but discarded it as ‘probably too hard for me right now’ so I’ll be looking forward to any reviews on it. I like the clash of concepts it seems to have going on, but who knows.
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I’m “only” halfway through, but it’s really good so far. I say “only” because If I had only been listening while commuting, I should only be about 1/6 of the way in at this point. However, I liked the beginning so much that I just stopped by the library on my way back yesterday and grabbed the book as well, and I just kept going The book helps with some small things, like the fact that some words are spoken in a fake language. In the book, the pronunciation is given as furigana, with the meaning in the main text, but the audiobook (for logical reasons) only gives the spoken part.
In terms of content, it’s insanely refreshing to have main characters who are actual adults, behaving like adults. Not everything is completely credible, but it’s on par with typical detective action series… but with magic.
Vocabulary-wise, there are some spikes in difficulty (like when things are being explained about magic or technical stuff) but those are short and far between. In terms of difficulty, I would put it on par with 容疑者Xの献身.
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Woah, adults in a light novel, please fill my cup. Well, I’ll see what you say when you are done but right now I’m pretty much sold. I’ve also read 容疑者Xの献身 so I should probably be fine with a little effort… Strong candidate to read next year.
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Welcome to the club 
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Oh, I think I might be sold. I like detective fiction! Also there is an anime: http://copcraft.tv/
The character clothes look a little bit like Last Exile or maybe Ergo Proxy?
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Aaaand I am done. In just over 24h (wall time; I didn’t check my listening/reading time).
Overall, the second half gave me some Sin City vibes. I did enjoy it, but it was more in the sense that “wow there’s an actual description of a [specific sex act] in a light novel?” rather than in actually enjoying what was happening.
Anyway, content warning for violence and sex, I guess. Edit: ah, also drug use.
Unrelated, but the あとがき is really fun too. I think I like this author.
… By the way, volume 7 was supposed to come out in, like, 2019, but got “delayed” due to the author’s health issues. It’s still not out. I hope it won’t remained delayed literally forever. Maybe I should slow down with this series
The guy on the cover is in his thirties. I don’t think I have seen that in a light novel, period. The girl is 20… which is too much of an age difference to be a love interest, so I sure hope nothing happens.
I really wonder how they handled the content I mentioned above 
I don’t think you can put that in visual format without watering it down…
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I just bought the three やがて君になる 佐伯沙弥香について novels on a half off sale. I’ve been thinking about rereading the やがて君になる manga for a while now (one of my favorite manga and been three years since I read it). Now I’m thinking that I’ll read the first spinoff novel, then reread the manga, then (I guess?) read the second spinoff novel, and then read the third spinoff novel. The second one is the weird one since it takes place during the events of the manga, so it’s not clearly before or after. But this seems like a decent plan overall.
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I started reading 先生とそのお布団, yet another recommendation I got on the Natively forum, and it is a pretty interesting read.
It is a light-novelization of the life of the author, as he struggles to write and publish during 2012-2017 period. The one weird thing is that the main character has literally the same name as the author, but there’s the usual blurb at the beginning saying this work is fiction and that any resemblance to actual people or organizations is a coincidence? Like, obviously not, though?
His (the actual author) first series was published at the same date as the character, and was canceled after the 3rd volume too. The real published was ファミ通文庫, which became ピコピコ文庫 in the book That info made me appreciate the name change even more. “Coincidence” indeed.
So, anyway, taking the content with a grain of salt, I really like the way it turned out in a light novel style.
Seeing all the constraints that exist on light novel authors, I’m not surprised that there isn’t more variety in there. The saddest part so far has been when he has been told that SF doesn’t sell, so probably not going to be published.
At the same time, I suddenly understood much better the あとがき of 86 where the author said “what the heck? I was just writing whatever I wanted to and still got published?”, especially since 86 is actually SF.
Anyway, the part where the author is proof reading his own stuff made me want to try writing my own novels too, because why not. That was brief, though, since, when I looked at the top series on a couple of websites in English, it was still more of the same… So it’s not just なろう that has this tendency.
(At the same time, it’s not like I care about making money out of it, so, even if I’m writing into the void, it’s not much of a problem )
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So weird to me, I grew up on SF. Haven’t read much in Japanese so far, but I’ll change that eventually.
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Same, my parents love SF (and fantasy), so I read a lot of it since I was a kid.
I think the author was talking specifically about light novels, which also matches my experience (not much SF in there), but it’s still sad…
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SF not selling might be a general issue, since much of the existing SF was targeting the times we live in right now so much of the novelty and “oh ah” is gone.
However, Japan has a very strong interest in SF and there is tons of books from Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke and Robert Heinlein translated into Japanese. I actually do have a few, picked them up from a local Japanese store as second/third-hand books for 2 euro a pop.
Not sure about Japanese SF. I know mostly crime fiction and thrillers.
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