@doceirias As if waiting for me to make two posts in two days the obi of the new volume says this series total sales have topped a million, which is a LOT more than I'd been assuming. I guess this is a legit sleeper hit.
Arslan is by the author of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, which people like. And it gets exposure through a manga drawn by the artist of Fullmetal Alchemist, which people like. So I think people would like Arslan too.
Since I've been learning Japanese I decided to go ahead and read the entirety of the manga in Japanese for practice. And it's really good. I highly reccomend Apothecary Diaries fans picking up the English release of the manga and I really hope the light novels get picked up for translation too. Especially since they're supposed to have branching stories with ln5.