This is a melancholic spoiler free review.
If you read casually or seriously, you will almost certainly be disappointed by the translation. Even someone who does not read at all may be put off by this, so I urge serious caution before embarking on your purchase. I have not read anything that contains such poor grammatical structure and diction to date, which baffles me at how anyone at the publishing company could have thought releasing this was acceptable.
This translation is - at the time of writing this review - the worst I have encountered. I am telling you this as someone who has a wall of books behind me, has read countless novels, consumes stories published online by amateur authors (from sites that have low quality control), and tries to read at least one novel per week. This LN holds the record of the most poorly written piece of literature that I have encountered. Writing this makes my heart writhe in pain because of how much enjoyment I derive from the series as a whole and ranking it so low feels akin to driving a dagger into the heart of that which I love.
The whole point of picking up the LN is to further elucidate the wonderful world and character collection that Tappei Nagatsuki has created. Instead, we receive the opposite. The descriptions are shallow, the dialogue makes it impossible at times to distinguish who is speaking, and scenes that exist in the animation have no detail given to it.
The diction level is confusing. My friend (who introduced me to this series) warned me that light novels are designed for easy consumption and that I should not be expecting a wide-ranging vocabulary. This is perfectly fine, as my desires are to enjoy a well-designed story with rich characters. My confusion arises from the simplicity of words chosen which are juxtaposed to exotic ones. Whenever I encounter a new word that I am unfamiliar with, I always google it. I believe this is important for all readers as it is the primary way of both growing one’s vocabulary, and for allowing authors to succinctly elucidate their creation. However, there is a proper time to use new diction. It should make sense in the context it is used, and the few cases I did encounter a wider vocabulary choice in the LN, it felt forced. It was as if the words were selected for the sake of including an arbitrary word, rather than using it to augment the dialogue. This is antithetical to why we use such language!
Punctuation choice becomes grating quickly. The biggest offender by far is the overindulgence in ellipses. It is not uncommon to see a sentence written with multiple ellipses, even outside of dialogue. This looks both amateurish and grates on my nerves as it implies either trailing off, or an implicit response query. Overuse is awkward and jarring, and by overuse I mean in every second or third sentence (let alone two or three times per sentence in a surprising amount of cases). I have never read any piece of literature that uses this many ellipses, and the effect on me as the reader is that the writer wants to use commas but has no concept that they exist.
Have you ever written something rapidly, and upon proofreading you discover repetition of a certain noun or verb? When you read over your work, it becomes obvious that the sentence needs to be tightened up. There are countless examples throughout the LN where the sentence contains references to the same word three or more times, and it comes off sounding very awkward and unpolished. This is a recurring theme throughout the LN and becomes excessively jarring to read.
The lack of description leaves my mind in an unpainted, blank slate. You cannot recommend this to anyone who has *not* watched the animated series because the characters will be a 'nothing blob' in their mind. While the pictures in the LN show you what some of them look like, it is not possible to picture the vast landscapes from either soulless, minute, or worse: absent descriptions. This is a great sin, as each of the characters in the show are unique, vivid, and possess great personalities. A LN is ripe for being able to expand on these dimensions, and failure to do so means readers who have not seen the animation will be missing a richness that I believe contributes to the wonderful world which has led so many reviewers to give this series such a high rating.
I get lost when it comes to discerning who is talking. A lot of the text will have sequential quotations without indications of who is delivering the dialogue. This is a valid way of having a 1-on-1 conversation because it is clear who is speaking. However, when you introduce three or more characters, this clarity is lost for obvious reasons. It is also not as if one character has a method of talking that allows you to identify the narrator of the current text. I have read novels where there are multiple characters, but you can tell who is talking by the vernacular alone. This is absent in the LN, leading me to muddle through a conversation not knowing who is speaking to who, and left with having to piece together post-conversation who said what.
From the examples I have listed above, these kinds of mistakes are almost nonexistent in standard novels. Such novels are also on average multiple times longer than this LN, yet the LN has countless offenses on virtually every page. There is no excuse when other authors can shell out a novel of 550+ pages while making none of these mistakes.
I would also like to note that these problems are very likely specific to the English version. My friend who possesses a different translation informed me his reading was not plagued by such issues.
I am too afraid to get the subsequent books in the series. I love the story but putting myself through reading this translation has been a chore to say the least. Would you have told me "they are re-writing this series with proper editing," I would be all over it in a heartbeat. Without hesitation I would pay double the price if this LN were properly crafted. I do not know how this was allowed to be published, my only explanation is that this series was rushed in its translation and the staff responsible for this publication are paid so poorly that they shoved it out the door so they can move onto the next item in their backlog. This is not how art should be treated, and I consider this a massive injustice to the series.
This review pains me to write; I have given it 2 stars because every evening I must force myself read one of my favorite stories. Let that absurdity sink in for a moment. The only thing driving my progression (even though I know what is going to happen because I've already seen far beyond this LN) is my love for the series, and because I feel guilty having a "did-not-finish" book laying around. If the publisher ever reads this, please, contact me if you rewrite this and give it a face lift. I will pay you double, triple, whatever, I don't care, my wallet is yours.
I want to support Tappei Nagatsuki. I want to support the translators. I cannot support this, however. I urge the company to fix this mistake, as there will almost certainly be someone who picks up the books first and is turned off by everything I have described in this review.
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Such an amazing series but the translation needs to be faster! Read the web novels!
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