Read a few books on my trip, here are my reviews (mostly copy pasted from my review on the Reddit site):
Hannelore's Fifth Year Vol 1 and 2
So I'm A Spider, So What Vol 1-16 (I binge read all of it in 5 days lmao)
Lazy Dungeon Master Vol 1
If It's For My Daughter I'll Defeat the Demon Lord Vol 1
Sherlock Holmes Collection (about 1/4 through)
Hannelore's Fifth Year Vol 1 and 2
Do I even need to preface by saying Bookworm is one of my favourite light novel series? When I was reading Bookworm, it was crazy how I never wanted it to end, but then the story got kinda more uninteresting the more it moved from Myne happily upending economics to Myne being heavily stifled by noble politics. Then it got boring during the Georgine/Gervasio invasion arc since what Bookworm really excels at isn't fighting but the talk of economics and politicking and the movement of relationships between a huge group of people... but it is still one of the greatest completed isekai of all time and top ranked in sales/LN rankings for a reason.
Actually, I put off reading Hannelore's side story for a long time because I thought I would never be able to get invested in anyone but Myne in the Bookworm universe. Her inner monologues are hilarious and her banter with Ferdinand is peak. But then I read H5Y, and I was wrong. Reading Myne in 3rd POV/not her POV reminded me how truly selfish and in her world Myne is, where she flat out doesn't care about noble social conventions in the least (fair). Her conversation with Hannelore about her harspiel song was THE defining moment where the reader goes, oh yeah Myne is apathetic as hell and Hannelore somehow lucked out in being her friend.
And Hannelore is amazing. In Myne's POV we've always seen Hannelore as a cute twin tail girl in an overpowering duchy who loves romance books and handles doggos like a badass, but here in her POV holy shit does the dark side come in. Unlike Myne she's a true noble, so while Myne is the kind of player that would upend the chess board of noble politics, Hannelore is aware she's a player and plays the noble game. In her POV she breaks down easily to the reader what people are saying and what they actually mean (0 points to Myne, lol), and the political ramifications, and then responds to them like her next move in chess. It's honestly so refreshing after Bookworm basically gave up on letting Myne do anything politically interesting/strategic thinking in the story and threw it all to Ferdinand (o7) because he's the deus ex fiancee to any political problem Myne finds herself in. I like Ferdinand, but Myne after rescuing Ferdinand has like, 0 agency, and since Ferdinand is her biggest plot armor the author had to invent divine mana and amnesia to make us feel even a little worried for her.
And is it strange that I'm so not interested in what Myne is doing in the past, lol. While I was reading Bookworm, with all the references (teases) to Ferdinand's Academy life, I was 100% sure at some point the author would write a prequel about him, his life in the villa and in the Academy and playing ditter, and I would be hella interested in it, but now it looks like it's going to in the form of 'Myne travels back in time to segments of Ferdinand's past to save him' I became so disinterested because it basically robs Ferdinand of any agency of his life. Hannelore being in charge of her politicking and full knowledge of noble society makes her so much more interesting to watch, especially when she has talks with the Zent about ditter and arranging the match with her annoying ahhh half brother.
Speaking of which, Sigiswald and her little half brother really are written to be chumps huh. I was really rooting for Ortwin but I'm pretty sure after seeing the 3rd POV in Vol 1 and 2 and how the author deliberately holds off on Kenntrips revealing his feelings he's going to be the winner.
I'm also happy that we got some closure to the Wilfried problem with Hannelore. First off, Wilfried is hilarious in H5Y. Nobody who has read Bookworm will think that Wilfried (and Ehrenfest) will be aiding Drewanchel in ditter, because we know Wilfried is a massive idiot, but Hannelore doesn't know that which leads to the Charlotte/Sylvester apologising scene and poor Ortwin getting suspected even more. Then there's the whole Hannelore having the scales fall from her eyes and seeing Wilfried for who he truly is. Peak writing with her confession leading into her jumping back a year and witnessing firsthand Wilfried's massive inferiority complex. Peak writing with Wilfried saying 'no one wants me to be aub' and Hannelore feeling sad for him. Genuinely I feel bad for Wilfried (even if I did hate him in the main story for all of Part 4 and 5) because he has been ruined by everyone around him (fuck Oswald or whatever his head retainer was called) including the author, who could have given him a whole glowup during the Myne jureve timeskip but was instead written to have no motivation to change for plot reasons I guess. I like how his personality was expanded on in Charlotte POV to be more of 'thoughtless and apathetic to noble conventions and resistant to painful introspection and change' rather than 'oh he's kind and honest and would survive in normal society just not noble one'.
Well at least his interactions with Ortwin in the main story (being unknowingly manipulated by Ortwin to give free information, while thinking Ortwin is just his bestie and his gewinnen buddy) is why I went into H5Y liking Ortwin a lot for how smart he was shown to be offscreen. Rip to Ortwin though.
As an aside, Bookworm was amazing. Reading a long saga light novel brought me back to when I first binge read all of Mushoku Tensei when I was like, a kid (for obvious reasons Mushoku Tensei isn't as good as Bookworm). Part 5 peaked at V8 (obviously), and during the whole reveal of the history of the Grutrissheit (peak writing for the backbone of the world to be a book for a bookworm MC tbh, the moment when she first speaks and summons Grutrissheit is peak).
I binge read Bookworm and at that time the official TL stopped at P5V7 and the next vol was only scheduled for 2 months later which was straight out torture. The conflict after that - the royalty over who should get the hot potato Grutrissheit, cleaning up Georgine (who doesn't even show up onscreen like Veronica breh) and Gervasio, Myne's feystone phobia and Mestionoria's maliciousness towards Myne and Ferdinand despite Myne.
So I'm A Spider, So What Vol 1-16
Don't ask how I binge read this in 5 days... A while back, I originally read the manga first until the MC got out of the Labyrinth then dropped it, then I followed the anime (the story is good despite the bad action animation in the second half of the anime), tried to continue with the web novel but gave up because of the shitty MTLs. I finally got around to reading the LNs and it is a whole lot more polished than the WN. For one thing, my goat Wrath's tragic backstory is more subtly described in external POVs rather than a flat out 'oh yeah have Kyouya describing in heartrending detail how he gets the Kin Eater skill'. (Wrath and Sophia are the goats and my favourite characters, followed by Guli-Guli. Peak designs.)
The best part about the LN is of course the way the author drip feeds the lore by 'messing' with the timeline. We first get introduced to our MC, who starts out in the classic Korean novel-style 'dropped into hell mode, gotta kill monsters, level those stats and climb a tow-uh I mean, labyrinth'. Then we start jumping to another person's POV, which builds anticipation for when the 2 'MCs' are going to meet (and wow is Shun getting the easy life what a chump), and then we get hit with the bomb of 'oh yeah the timeline is different sike'. Then Taboo gets introduced (teased), and Guile and D occasionally come in to vaguepost lore, then we meet baby Sophia, and Potimas changing the genre of the story???
It's super crazy how the ending of the 'first' arc - where Shun and co. first see White - is really near the end of the story, and after that we jump back in time and it's only 2-3 volumes away from the ending that we get back to that point. So everything up to that point is one big buildup to 'Ariel and the gang punk Shun and co. for being dumb idiots'. And the payoff feels so good. (Yeah you can tell Shun was meant to be hated.)
One thing about Spider is that when it starts to get boring, somehow it manages to pull me back in - usually 'levelling' Isekais get boring as the MC gets stronger because, well, nothing can threaten them anymore. That's how I felt once the MC left the labyrinth and reincarnated after Ariel nukes them. But then they somehow manage to recover from that by making the MC lose her skills and swapping POVs (and introducing Wrath the goat). (I, uh, skimmed through most of Julius's volume though. Not interested in him at all. Sorry man.) The best part of course is when the reincarnated students start interacting with each other and firmly establish that Wrath and Sophia are leagues above everyone else.
Another peak writing of the story is how it's firmly established itself as a tragedy. The world is dying, and it was only saved by the whim of a god, who turned it into her sandbox and made its residents fight each other unendingly, and there's a real sense of 'ah shit we are fucked' behind everything everyone in the world does. Kyouya and a few people put it across well enough, about how this world is different from the world they came from, and fighting and killing is the norm and you live with it and have to go on, doing whatever you do with pride and conviction, etc. Even the final battle with Guile and White is done out of a sense of desperation, and not because both parties want to fight each other.
There's also the fact that a lot of Spider is about trope reversal - the Q&A with the author in the EX novel explains a lot, like Shun getting a harem no one wants, and Appraisal being dogshit at the start (Appraisal my beloved), etc.
Of course the reals downer is the ending, where White gets in one punch against the extra boss stage and D decides to roll credits then and there but maybe that's just in character. In a way it reminds me of the god character in Umineko where when someone fights them, the god pauses the narration to monologue 'uh I guess I'll write in the narration that I obliterate them but since I'm too lazy to write the cause I'll leave that for later and write the effect' and the narration continues and they get obliterated.
Still it's a very good series, albeit a little depressing despite the chipper narration of the MC (the one light in the entire downer of the series), and one of the best completed LN isekai series to date imo.
Lazy Dungeon Master Vol 1
Searching for (completed) light novel recommendations on Reddit is never a good idea, but I tried picking it up anyway. This definitely reads like typical isekai narou slop, I can excuse the foot fetish, but the loli slave obsession is weird bruh. Especially when I tried to read Vol 2 and got creeped out by the personality of the new slave he gets.
If It's For My Daughter I'll Defeat the Demon Lord Vol 1
Continuing the saga of 'Never trust Reddit recommendations part 2', I picked up the allegedly not Usagi Drop (according to Reddit) of light novels. The writing is pretty clumsy and by that I mean it doesn't respect 3rd person POV rules. E.g. when POV is set in 3rd person (MC), it sometimes jumps to explaining another person's POV and thoughts and motivations like that's just natural. Yeah I dropped it because I couldn't vibe with the narration. Idk how to explain it either but the scale of the worldbuilding feels so narrow. Lore on the Gods and priests ranking system is forcefed like you're reading a wiki summary, which is a failed opportunity when you could use the titular daughter who has no idea of the world to explain the worldbuilding to her naturally.
It just feels like this novel could have used more time to cook. The relationship between Latina and Dale could have been more developed, giving more words during the time they spent learning to trust each other rather than Latina latching onto Dale immediately. It feels like the author didn't trust the readers enough or didn't want to write the progression and skipped straight to Latina working hard to be accepted by Dale, her father not father. Also, this whole ass story would have been the same if they had swapped Dale calling himself her father to her brother. Latina literally finds herself a mother and father in 2 other important supporting characters, and Dale is absent like. 50% of the time because he's busy with work in another town and leaves her in the care of said supporting characters. Why did the author choose to do that.
Sherlock Holmes Collection
After playing through the Great Ace Attorney and shamefully watching the first season of BBC Sherlock, I finally picked up the actual Sherlock Holmes books written by ACD himself. And my conclusion is that I always mistaken, my life is a lie, and Sherlock Holmes is not a mystery genre at all. Why did I ever think it was something like Agatha Christie, where the clues are laid out for the reader to solve? It's just crime fiction...
ACD's Sherlock Holmes is a collection of short stories where ACD brings a rando to Sherlock Holmes in his house, they lay out their story and 'mystery', and Holmes thinks for a while, asks a few questions, maybe goes out to investigate (which half of the time is done offscreen cos the POV is Watson and you don't need to know the magic of how Holmes does it), then solves the mystery by bringing the culprit to the rando, where 90% of the time, said culprit has always been mentioned before in the rando's narration, which turns most cases into a 'which person has been mentioned a ton in the rando's exposition, that's the guy most likely to be the culprit' ahhh situation.
I'm sure back then it was a sensation, but nowadays the mystery/crime fiction genre has so much more entries (though I do think it is dying out a little and/or turning into horrible slop) that Sherlock Holmes stories don't hold up anymore. I think the problem is that the more you read, the more you realise the mysteries are either super outlandish or a rehash of previous cases. The Red-Headed League is an example of the former (digging a tunnel to rob a bank of their secret stores of gold), and the Speckled Band is the latter (a daughter getting killed by her stepfather for trying to marry out, literally a case of identity but with murder). Then there are cases when the mystery is completely set up and ACD spoils it like the Engineer's Thumb ('wow I wonder what they need this hydraulic press for' narration: well it is obvious that they were using it for counterfeit coins 'bruh').
One of the sad parts is that unlike what Sherlock Holmes says about observation and deduction, because of how ACD writes the narration - where crucial evidence is magic tricked into existence at the end when Holmes makes the culprit reveal their evil machinations in a monologue - for most cases, the reader rarely gets to deduce the culprit with hard facts, and have to rely on asspull gut feelings 'oh the rando is talking a lot about this certain person, it has to be him' to figure out the eventual reveal. Either that or the 'mystery' is so damn obvious (Copper Beeches, where it's obvious that the rando is being used as a substitute) you just read to find out what outlandish twist (they've locked up the original in the attic to, surprise, prevent her from marrying her lover because then the family wouldn't get her money!) ACD is using to justify the mystery. Now that I've written this out, ACD really needs to stop using the 'the mystery has to do with women being prevented from marrying their lover / committing crimes because of their secret lover' plot point. Bro gotta be spamming that like Naruto with the Rasengan, surely he has more tricks in the bag than that.
