@GeorgeMTO thank you!

Ascendance of a Bookworm (listening to part 1,volume 3 at the moment). Reba Buhr is the voice of Myne for English dub of the anime. She has also voiced several other anime characters, such as the tactical-pink dressed P-90 loving LLENN.

It is likely watching the anime with your ears.

I’ve also listened to the following enjoyable series:
In Another World with My Smartphone
My Quiet Blacksmith Life in Another World
The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent
Solo Leveling (this was my first encounter, read/watched the series later)

Bullet Hellion has not been announced for a print release.

@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:

Little kids cannot fight adults and win. I don't care if you have magically enhanced muscles. I don't care if you have combat experience from a previous life. A four year old will never defeat a grown man in a fight.

It would be more believable if they had the kid using tactics and a projectile weapon. But they also default to sword-fighting and hand-to-hand combat for some reason.

@Passiflora-C Interesting perspective.

I'm not as hard-core as many of the readers here. I'm usually only aware of what has been officially translated and that's about it. To the extent that translation houses don't make side-story content available, I mostly won't even know what I'm missing.

For me, it takes time to get into a story, and what really interests me is the characters. I may be a bit of an extreme case, but I have a hard time caring about spin-offs or prequels or anything that doesn't directly result in me spending more time with the characters that I know and love. Just some silly examples:

The Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy were transformational for me as a young reader. The Silmarilion sits mostly unread on a shelf 30+ years later. If it doesn't tell me more about Frodo and Aragorn and Merry and Pippin, then I just don't care.

I could never get into the 2nd Mistborn trilogy, because it wasn't about Vin or Kelsier.

I didn't care about the Star Wars prequels because it's not about Luke and Han and Leia. By contrast, I very much enjoyed the sequel trilogy despite all the "true fans" hating on those movies.

I've watched the Danmachi anime, but only the three main seasons currently available. I haven't yet managed to watch any of the spin-off or prequel series (familia or oratoria or whatever it's called), and there's a good chance I never will.

I have yet to watch the Re:Zero prequel movie with Emilia in the winter forest or whatever.

I watched Fate:Zero and then Fate:Stay Night. But I've lost interest in that series after that - I find the explosion of Fate series almost incomprehensible at this point and don't even know where to start.

Anyway, my bottom line is this. I agree that in an ideal world all the content should be translated, because I know there are people who would want it. Heck, given the choice between having it or not having it, I would vote to have it (I'm still waiting on those Bookworm drama CDs!). But it's actually a pretty low priority for me, personally, as a casual reader. Given that resources are limited, I'd prefer the translation house focus on completing the main story sequence rather than side-story content.

@RoaringKitty Volume 14 Part 3 was released (for pre-publication readers) on the 10th of January this year. Volume 14 has 16 parts, the last of which was released the Friday before last.

As for volume 15, we generally don't get much advance warning of when a book will begin pre-publication releases. As a matter of policy, JNC staff won't talk about release times until they're ready to be added to the release calendar - which normally happens shortly before the release of the first part of the volume. I can't even give you a rough guess as to when that might happen, much as I wish I could.

@GeorgeMTO thx for the info

@Lcaldas80 It's right here on JNC. You can access it by either subscribing to JNC's premium or regular membership on the website, or preordering the volume using coins (which can be purchased on either the website or the app).

@mjun I watched the anime

@Perplexed Interesting thought. Licenses are contracts though, and generally don't get changed in the middle. A novel getting an anime though would increase the workload of the Japanese companies, which could be a possible reason for a delay.

Licensing of "new" volumes, meaning ones that didn't exist at the time of the original contract, always takes time. Then there is the long-standing fact that we the readers do not know how many volumes get licensed per contract, but it never is the entire series unless that series is complete.

J-Novel Club has only "dropped" one series without translating all the available volumes, and that was the Japanese publisher's decision. I'm fairly certain this volume will show up, eventually.

Hello,

Unfortunately, J-Novel Club is unable to comment publicly on potential licensing decisions or negotiations.

@YooS111

If you only want to buy one book, the simplest thing to do would be to sign up for a free account, then buy enough coins and purchase the book. Most light novels are 699 coins and most manga are 899 coins.

You can think of a coin as about 1 cent in US dollar currency.

However, if you want to get the best deal, I would recommend signing up for a Premium membership for one month. This adds complexity because you have to remember to cancel the membership at the end of the month if you do not wish to continue it. However each month of Premium includes 699 coins and a 15% discount on buying more coins. So you could sign up for a Premium membership, buy one book with the included coins, and be able to purchase more coins at a discount if you want to keep reading more volumes in a series.

A Premium membership would also let you read the catch-up series and the newly translated parts of ongoing series that are updated each week, so you can see if you like any of the other series beyond whichever series initially caught your interest. I have discovered several series that I enjoy this way.

J-Novel Club is an unusual publisher, in a good way. There's a bit of a learning curve to understand how it works, but I have been pleasantly surprised how thoughtful their design decisions have been, with regard to their business model and how they interact with readers.

We're waiting to see if the author is writing more books or not, so we can continue publishing 3-in-1 omnibus editions. As for other Slayers series, we don't comment on possible licenses before they're ready to be announced, so please check out our announcements when they occur to see what we have licensed.

@Perplexed, that’s exactly why I always look for it at J-Novel Club first whenever a novel piques my interest.

I finally 'made the leap'; I purchased a Meebook m7. I had some gift cards for the bezo's site so purchased there (used 'like new" for $159)

ticked a number of boxes for me:

runs Android o/s and supports the JNovel app eInk - so easy on the eyes and long battery life has a browser mechanical page buttons size of a paperback (roughly octavo) usb type-c charging/data (plus wifi/bluetooth) rated decently by sources I trust

just got it and am playing with it now - will post more once I've used it on the train a few times

@TrinaBear sorry, no, but maybe the more specific title will lure in someone who does, while keeping new catch-up readers safe.

I just read The Great Cleric because it was on catch-up, and it might be the most impressive example of falling off a cliff only to climb out of the hole I've personally encountered. It starts off as nothing special, but there are some fun characters and mysteries in the second and third volumes (the first is entirely a training arc), but in the fourth and fifth volumes literally every character besides the MC is ditched along with much of the plot up to that point in favour of a huge new cast that is barely introduced and random political shenanigans. The new characters are soooo boring and one-note. The earlier volumes introduce an obvious love interest and her friends who are actually interesting to have in the party, only for her to become irrelevant for multiple volumes for...no reason. And when this second arc is done, the new cast introduced to replace the old one is almost entirely left behind in favour of a mix of the old and new. I only pushed through to the end of volume 5 because it was free, though the finale was the start of a comeback.

It seems like the author realized his mistake at some point though because around volume 7 all the original characters and the permanent keeps from the second batch keep being relevant at regular intervals, but what saves the series is that the MC becomes a leader that is fun to watch in a crisis. Volumes 7 to 10 are easily the best of the series so far, and far better than the first three, but getting there is a tough sell.

On a positive note, it is the only isekai adventure series I've read so far where most of the regular cast is male. And while there are harem indications (I imagine the epilogue will consist in marrying at least 6 women), there are no harem antics, and one of the girls is clearly in focus.

I would also like to report that Full Clearing Another World Under a Goddess with Zero Believers is one of the rare consistent quality series, and to some extent it gets better as it goes. It's not nearly as good as Bookworm though, but it is good fun.

This is an issue on Amazon's side, and JNC can't resolve it. You should contact them to get the right file, which you did. The store you buy something is who you need to contact if there's an issue with your purchase; if they need anything from us, they will contact us. And if they can't help you, you should absolutely request a refund.

Also, I would like to remind everyone that if you buy directly from our website, you get the premium bonus content, and you can also load your books onto any device you want without restriction, including your Kindle!

@rajbha Because in Japan, that was the release order.