![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
larryhammer"Light novel" is the Japanese publishing term-of-art for what's called "young adult novel" in the US/UK, and like YA, the market for it started booming around a decade ago. The Sword Art Online series are light novels, as are the Haruhi Suzumiya series. I read a couple more in fan translations on planes during this past week's family emergency, all three as it happens shonen titles aimed at boys:
Tabi ni Deyou, Horobiyuku Sekai no Hate Made ("let's travel to the end of the going-to-ruin world"), Tadahito Yorozuya - This is a genre I've not met much before, as I can only describe the central event of the book as a existential apocalypse: people are slowly vanishing, starting with their names, then any images of them, then their personal coloring, then their shadows, then finally their existence and anything that is entirely theirs, including other people's memories of them. The protagnoists are a pair of high-school students who've lost their names, and so are known only as the boy and the girl, traveling by motorcycle across the decaying landscape of the north island (the one that used to be known as Hokkaido).
What first appears a narrative gimmick, the writing of a book without using a single proper noun, is justified by the author's working through the science-fictional premise, elaborating the worldbuilding beyond the first-order consequences. The structure is episodic and the characterization of often shallow (hello tiresome tsundere cliche), but two of the episodes have genuinely moving climaxes and the incidents of traveling are interesting, in a low-density-story sort of way.
Gekkô ("moonlight"), Nastuki Mamiya - This initially looks like a high-school rom-com with mystery trappings, but it turns out to be a Hitchcockian psychological thriller wrapped in smart adolescent snark. *plot and character details elided to avoid spoilers* The author occasionally uses some standard school-story tropes, most of them deployed to mislead reader expectations -- all get undermined one way or another. The plot is slightly misshapen by the unreliable arrator's refusal to look certain directions until he either wants to or is forced to, but otherwise this is a nice breath of fresh air that could stand among the upper tier contemprorary American YA novels without shame. Recommended.
Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei ("poor-performing student of the magic high school") v3, Tsutomu Satou - Third installment of a science fantasy series set in a future where magic has been technologized. The title character is a skilled magical technician entering the premier high school for training mages, who's been placed in the second tier of students because his raw power is weak. His honor-student sister, OTOH, is the star of her class. Together, they fight -- well, "crime" is as good a collective term as any, especially if you couple it with "school social pressures" and "messed-up family politics."
Fair warning: the two have creepy incest-y vibes, frequently lampshaded by other characters, used not so much for the titilation but as one signal of just how much their family has screwed them over in different ways. There's also flashy magic, rationalized ninjitsu, an absurdly powerful student council, an anvilicious fanservice scene, and a protagonist with more hidden powers than you can shake a magical Casting Assistance Device at. As for this volume's plot, it's the first half of a summer magic tournament among all the magic schools -- with story to be completed in volume 4. Le sigh. OTOH, I want to know what happens next enough to want the next volume RSN, so it's doing something right.
(All three are unlicensed, available from the same translation group as SAO, including in ePub/mobi/PDF formats.)
---L.
Tabi ni Deyou, Horobiyuku Sekai no Hate Made ("let's travel to the end of the going-to-ruin world"), Tadahito Yorozuya - This is a genre I've not met much before, as I can only describe the central event of the book as a existential apocalypse: people are slowly vanishing, starting with their names, then any images of them, then their personal coloring, then their shadows, then finally their existence and anything that is entirely theirs, including other people's memories of them. The protagnoists are a pair of high-school students who've lost their names, and so are known only as the boy and the girl, traveling by motorcycle across the decaying landscape of the north island (the one that used to be known as Hokkaido).
What first appears a narrative gimmick, the writing of a book without using a single proper noun, is justified by the author's working through the science-fictional premise, elaborating the worldbuilding beyond the first-order consequences. The structure is episodic and the characterization of often shallow (hello tiresome tsundere cliche), but two of the episodes have genuinely moving climaxes and the incidents of traveling are interesting, in a low-density-story sort of way.
Gekkô ("moonlight"), Nastuki Mamiya - This initially looks like a high-school rom-com with mystery trappings, but it turns out to be a Hitchcockian psychological thriller wrapped in smart adolescent snark. *plot and character details elided to avoid spoilers* The author occasionally uses some standard school-story tropes, most of them deployed to mislead reader expectations -- all get undermined one way or another. The plot is slightly misshapen by the unreliable arrator's refusal to look certain directions until he either wants to or is forced to, but otherwise this is a nice breath of fresh air that could stand among the upper tier contemprorary American YA novels without shame. Recommended.
Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei ("poor-performing student of the magic high school") v3, Tsutomu Satou - Third installment of a science fantasy series set in a future where magic has been technologized. The title character is a skilled magical technician entering the premier high school for training mages, who's been placed in the second tier of students because his raw power is weak. His honor-student sister, OTOH, is the star of her class. Together, they fight -- well, "crime" is as good a collective term as any, especially if you couple it with "school social pressures" and "messed-up family politics."
Fair warning: the two have creepy incest-y vibes, frequently lampshaded by other characters, used not so much for the titilation but as one signal of just how much their family has screwed them over in different ways. There's also flashy magic, rationalized ninjitsu, an absurdly powerful student council, an anvilicious fanservice scene, and a protagonist with more hidden powers than you can shake a magical Casting Assistance Device at. As for this volume's plot, it's the first half of a summer magic tournament among all the magic schools -- with story to be completed in volume 4. Le sigh. OTOH, I want to know what happens next enough to want the next volume RSN, so it's doing something right.
(All three are unlicensed, available from the same translation group as SAO, including in ePub/mobi/PDF formats.)
---L.