@saidahgilbert said in Prince Herscherik Vol. 3 Discussion!:

It feels to me like in order for Ryoko ( sorry, prince Herscherik) to get her ( sorry, his) reverse harem, there can't be any female competition that will divert the attention of the harem. So female characters must be either be dead or romantically undesirable. It's just like those harem novels where the only female characters that appear are romance-able options. In this series, since female characters are not 'romance-able' options, they are not needed for the plot and therefore scarcely appear.

Yeah.

Like, dammit, who cares about everybody being romance-able that much? Gimme an actual interesting romance instead. Gimme Jeanne being interested in Hersch, who tells her he only likes her as a friend. Gimme Jeanne hanging around Hersch in that depressed heartbroken way people her age do, then noticing Oran, who has feelings for her, but is now afraid he's just her rebound, even after she's become totally serious about him. Gimme drama and heartbreaks and awkwardness and closeness and people who aren't main characters having love lives too.

Dead Jeanne and Hersch feeling bad about that is a wasted opportunity. He's the main character, he'll always have something to feel bad about. Her dealing with having done terrible things, trying to do better, but always feeling the guilt, and healing through her friendships and loves and newfound confidence, now that would be a good read.

Not that Herscherik isn't a good read. Could have been better, though.

In Part 6, considering Villard invited Angeline in order to use her prestige against his brother, allowing Fernand to approach and attempt to charm her punches a gaping hole in his plan. He should have been attending her around the clock, ensuring that she never explored unaccompanied. Leaving her to her own devices runs the risk of something like Fernand convincing her to be his companion for the dance, turning her into his guest. Villard's plan isn't actually that bad, but he completely half-assed the execution.

I'm half expecting that a few pages later, Villard runs into her while she's wearing her fancy new dress, and is completely unable to recognize her even after she tells him that she's Angeline (whereas his brother was probably 90% sure who she was the moment he saw a woman with black hair that he didn't recognize and only asked her name to be polite).

@irioth
Sounds reasonable.

@TheWickerMan thanks for the update. Though I have kind of stopped logging my reads. The recommendations based on my reading suck.

As a positive, I should add that the book (mostly) treats people addicted to drugs with empathy and understanding, and as victims rather than criminals, which I heartily approve.

@Roy-Nukia I guess, I USED to be a big fan of Il Dam Yong. Aaaggh, it still frustrates me I won’t know how Legend of Maia was supposed to end let alone Freezing (still can’t believe he dropped that one). That’s why I’m cautious in regards to authors “pausing” their works.

Knowing from the afterword that most of this volume didn't exist in the WN makes me think Nakeisha isn't going to be in harem party. Given how late she was introduced in the story, I doubt she was in the WN at all. If a WN-non-existant character joins the party, the story would have to significantly diverge, or have the WN suddenly introduce her after Erich's already an adult.

@Windsagio I've only ever read the first part, had it on my list for a long time but never got to the other volumes, so I still have four more to go through now that it's on catchup, very happy about that. (:

@Leon_97 I think you're right and I somehow never made the connection. I assumed Theresea's statement of pining was forlorn but given the historical information it seems more likely to not be so. I'd forgotten that tidbit, or at least never placed it within this context.

Did the last four(?) sections at once.

Now, let me get this straight.
Somehow he fit 10,000 Iron Cavalry inside the castle itself?!
Never mind that's more than the combined forces at the Battle of Agincourt, just how large is this castle supposed to be?
Now move on to a force of 150,000 troops...more than currently in active service in all branches of the US Armed Forces.

And these appear to be the numbers for combatants, not including their support train.

The Deus Ex Machina of a means of instantly moving folks to his territories on the other side of Runan, combined with the final legacy of the last ruler of the Ancient Kingdom erasing the invading forces (and everything in the region.)
And our MC is all broken up that it required someone loosing one finger to keep the countdown going while they fled the suicide device...Frodo of the Nine Fingers would like to talk to you.

I might be able to swallow all of what's going on if the troop count were more reasonable.
The infrastructure required to support such numbers...no.

All the game aspects, yeah, fine, sure, but that doesn't change the numbers required to support such forces.

Yeah, I'm probably out of here.

He has an immortal dragon and a demon, I wonder if a vampire is going to set her eyes and fall in love with Shiro?

Crap, we never met the parents of Ninoritch’s beautiful mayor, Karen!

@Drenok said in Peddler in Another World Vol. 5 Discussion!:

Well as expected, the Second Queen is now exiled to Antartica and Sessh has obtained self confidence. Everything ends well... except for the news of the Ruins of the Dead...

Ruins of the dead could be interesting, maybe he can buy and bring over some Boring Company Not-A-Flamethrowers and market them for undead removal?

@Corodix said in Peddler in Another World Vol. 5 Discussion!:

Just give him Ninoritch and surroundings (the forest and such).

Probably not the direction which the author wants to take it in, but it would make a lot of sense.

I agree that it probably is not the direction the author intends to go, but from a purview of the kingdom, yes, it makes sense. Not knowing the structure of the nobility, Earl Bashure, whom Ninoritch reports to, should be of sufficient position to give Shiro a title of baron and that area. Given that the increase in tax revenue from Ninoritch stems from Shiro, he’d probably be getting the same amount as prior to Shiro’s appearance in this world.

Another all-in-one reader here.

This volume was surprisingly light on action, inventing magic and meeting new monsters compared to the first one. It was more, I don't know, social? Political? With a bit of city slow life and a heap of misunderstanding thrown in. I found it overall a bit weaker than the first volume. I didn't even think that the misunderstandings dragged on for too long, just that it would be better if more interesting stuff happened while it went on. It did have its share of great moments though. The relationship between Sara and Allen was always great, and I really liked Nelly's parts, and the ending too.

The story was very on the nose with the sudden policy switch instituted by the mayor to "get rid of the undesirables", meaning poor adventurers, and how horrible that is. Policies against the homeless, anybody? With the "totally unexpected" outcome of making things worse for everybody else too, of course, by disrupting the services the "undesirable" were actually providing to the town, and driving away the people who'd one day become experienced adventurers too. It was a little weird how this plotline suddenly disappeared about 3/4th through the book, though. Wonder if we'll get back to it. Confrontation with the mayor, with Ted having a tsk-to-face turn, perhaps?

And overall, I hope we're gearing for a "these nobles suck, time for a confrontation" plot, not "these nobles suck, but what can you do" one.

Of all the things I didn't expect to happen, Ted being revealed as a tsundere was pretty high on the list. Though Liam being a very kind, considerate, total piece of sh*t was a close second. This sort of people who are totally sure they're a good guy but actually only ever listen to themselves are the worst, aren't they?

I'm glad we finally saw Sara and Nelly reunited - the two are absolutely adorable together. Nelly actually more than Sara, because of how awkward she is on most situations that are not hunting. The way she would brute force her way through social encounters, like, what do you mean people don't usually pay by holding out the highest denomination coin and having the people around take care of the rest? :D Their banter when they're together reads so naturally, and it's so funny, I really missed them as a pair.

Favourite moment: Nelly saying "barrier" as she knocked the bottle out of the knight's hand even though she didn't use a barrier, she just wanted to try saying that once. She's really showing her inner child sometimes...

Growl.

A few changes from the webnovel I just wanted to note about Clara:

She wasn't missing an arm.

In the lightnovel, her Art Walking Library is single stage. In the webnovel, Walking Library is the third stage of the Reading Art, which allows her to read anything regardless of language or legibility. This function was never even used in the story, so I can see why they simplified it.

But most importantly, the scene of her joining the party was originally an Evangelion reference.

Oh, but that ball fight scene was satisfying.

"I'm not in here surrounded by you. You're in here surrounded by me." - Lynne, probably

I really enjoyed the first half. The last third was like watching a horrific trainwreck (literally). The only thing fuling me to read on was morbid curiosity (literally).

Nala getting left behind is unforgivable. She didn't deserve what she got. She could have at least become a thrall...

I don't think i can forgive the author for that one.

@Zeteni said in Min-Maxing My TRPG Build Vol. 3 Discussion!:

@Leon_97 A lot of us are very sad we will likely never meet the apprentice from this volume's Henderson. We'll never even learn her name. :sob:

This. ;_;

I've said it before, this is my favorite Henderson to date, by far. It's the only one that keeps everything I love about Erich - his whimsy, joy, wanderlust and drive to explore/find new things. Feywolf Erich is unrecognizable; Settled Erich is nice, and he's still recognizably Erich, but he's lost his drive.

@lucaslp5 said in Demon Lord, Retry! Vol. 8 Discussion:

@HarmlessDave On the good side, we most likely will be reading the new volume sometime next year!

I'm really looking forward to it. Especially with that cliffhanger at the end of volume 8.

@tsenglol On the author's twitter, some tweets seem to say they're going to start writing it again while the anime is airing, but I can't read Japanese. Their user is @SameSame_panic. I think they will write more because they are INSANELY excited about their work getting an anime. DeepL translates the tweet to "I'd like you to finish the original story, so I'll write more. ...... #Ikenai-kyo."

So we have to wait for the next volume to see the proper reunion between Asuka and Ryoma. The plot advanced a bit, but again, author could have done the same in three parts without losing any meaningful information. Well, I just hope it won't take five more volumes just to defeat Lupis.

Volume 1 (Premium Edition): High resolution color illustrations