Kantai Collection: KanColle: Kagerou, Setting Sail!／艦隊これくしょん -艦これ- 陽炎、抜錨します!

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Title (English): Kantai Collection: KanColle: Kagerou, Setting Sail!
Title (Romanized): Kantai Collection: KanColle: Kagerou, Batsubyou Shimasu!
Title (Japanese): 艦隊これくしょん -艦これ- 陽炎、抜錨します!

Vol1 cover

Publisher: ファミ通文庫 Famitsu Bunko
Author: 築地俊彦 Tsukiji Toshihiko
Illustrator: NOCO
Status: Completed, 7 Volumes in total

Genres: Friendship, Action, Weapon girls, mechagirls, Story of growth, bond, Loli(?), Yuri(?)

Synopsis (Taken from Pixiv):
The story is one which describe Kagerou, being the main character who recently moved from Kure to Yokosuka naval base, meeting and training together with Akebono, Nagatsuki, Satsuki, Ushio, and Arare who all have their problems in the naval base, leading them in the newly established Destroyer Division 14 against the Abyssal Fleet.
In this series, Kanmusu, fleet girls, are being set as "Human girl who had feedback from power and conscious of ships which were sank in the past great war", and is thus more focused on describing the fleet girls as individual person with their own emotion and their relationships with other, compares to other works using Kancolle as background. And the series have also elaborated and extended on game mechanics like remodeling and dissembling of the fleet girls in details.

Personal Comment:
This is one of the many Kantai Collection based official novel. Kantai Collection, the very popular browser game, itself being an open ended world have spun off many doujinshi creation, have also provided the ground for the creation of various media including anime, novel, and manga, all have their own individual setting and interpretation, and focus on different aspects of various characters involved in the series, often involving their own interpretation and characterization of characters involved.
Kagerou Batsubyoushimasu, together with Kakuyoku no Kizuna (another novel with Zuikaku as main character), are two of my favorite spin off media adaption of the Kantai Collection series. As mentioned before, each kancolle-based media series have their own setting and their way of developing stories. Kagerou Batsubyoshimasu, a story which focused on young destroyer fleet girls, seeing them trying to overcome each of their own troubles and barriers between themselves, and for them to grow and develop to build to become a stronger team, is something very fulfilling to readers, making readers feel energized by reading the story and bond between these young girls.
As each of these kancolle-based series have their own setting, they aren't dependent on each other, so there are no requirement of reading any other kancolle-based media before reading the novel, and it would help readers immerse into the story if they have played the game before, but that isn't really a requirement either and the series can be treated as a self-contained standalone work.