Okina Baba

Spider MC continues her quest to find a way out of the Middle Stratum and hopefully out of the labyrinth entirely. Unfortunately, she has discovered one of the drawbacks of defeating the fire wyrm at the end of the previous book: she's now so powerful and fearsome that weaker monsters avoid her, making it difficult for her to find food. And even then, there are still monsters around who are scarier and much more powerful than she is, namely Mother (the massive spider who gave birth to her) and Earth Dragon Araba.

Shun, meanwhile, has inherited the Hero title after his beloved older brother's death. The Hero title isn't normally passed down to members of the same family, so Shun never expected to become the next one and doesn't feel like he's even close to being as amazing as his brother was. Unfortunately, some shocking developments upend his life even further.

My synopsis feels vague and formless, and that's in part because the book does as well. The first and second books in this series had a pretty clear setup. Book 1: Spider MC was born and struggled to survive in a world where everything wanted to kill her, while in the world outside the labyrinth, Shun and the others did human things. Book 2: Spider MC made it out of the labyrinth's Lower Stratum only to find that the Middle Stratum was practically tailor-made for her destruction. Shun and the others continued to do human things and learned some magic.

In case you can't tell, I was generally more interested in the Spider MC portions of the previous books than the human portions. Unfortunately, in Book 3 Spider MC's chapters felt less focused, and most of the story progression happened in Shun's chapters, even though I continued to be relatively uninterested in him.

Spider MC grew stronger, to the point that she learned some things about this world that Shun and the other reincarnated students didn't know, and instead of doing something with that knowledge (the specifics of which readers were never told) she just continued on as she had been and then decided to face down some of the labyrinth's strongest monsters. Instead of being thrilling, Spider MC's final battle with Earth Dragon Araba was both depressing and unsatisfying. It didn't feel like she'd won due to improved experience and skills. It felt like she'd cheated.

Shun's portions of the book were filled with betrayal and drastic changes to his life. Unfortunately, Shun still came across as boring and relatively useless, despite his high stats. Part of it was the author's writing - Okina Baba's style works well for Spider MC, but it feels lifeless with just about every other character's POV. The other part of it was just...Shun. He's the most beige of heroes. Even his motivation for agreeing to move forward as the new Hero was tepid.

I finally got the Katia POV chapter I'd wanted since the first book, only for it to confirm that Katia's growing feelings for Shun were not, in fact, something she'd felt even back in her previous life, when she was a guy. Instead, living in a female body somehow affected Katia's soul and led to her falling in love with Shun even though she'd (or he'd) previously only been interested in women. It was disappointing, but not unexpected.

In Book 2, I realized that the chapters from Shun's POV were probably happening several years after the chapters from Spider MC's POV, and that the Spider MC of the series' present was likely an enormously powerful villain. Book 3 seemed to confirm those things, but the series' timeline aspects have been so confusing that I'm still not sure, and the author made things worse by including several chapters starring more mysterious unnamed characters. I really wish Baba would get to the point and clarify things.

That said, if I'm right about what's going on, I'm not entirely sure if I want to continue on with this series. Spider MC as a morally grey character trying to figure out how to function semi-peacefully outside the labyrinth could have been fun - there was even one chapter that showed the direction that kind of story might take. Spider MC as a murderous and conscienceless villain plotting the world's destruction sounds much less fun to me.

I don't currently own any other books in this series and don't feel much of an urge to go buy more. The grimdark vibe it's taking on doesn't appeal to me. But who knows, maybe the author has plans up their sleeve that will turn things around?

Extras:

A folded page with a couple full-color illustrations, black-and-white illustrations throughout, and an afterword by the author.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (altro)

Spider MC is back, and she's finally made it to the Middle Stratum. Unfortunately for her, it's filled with pools of magma and fire-wielding monsters, and she's incredibly weak against fire. Not only that, but her spider silk burns up in seconds, meaning that her primary weapon is now useless. However, going back to the Lower Stratum doesn't seem like a good option, so she's going to have to focus on leveling up her other skills and get creative in order to survive and eventually make it back to the Upper Stratum.

Meanwhile, Shun, Katia, and Sue are now training at a special academy, and Shun and Katia have met most of the other reincarnated students that Ms. Oka talked about. However, there are two remaining ones that she refuses to say anything about. For some reason, they cannot be brought to the academy. While Shun is training, Julius, Shun's Hero older brother, is off fighting high-level monsters and growing increasingly concerned about the potential for a large-scale war.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the first volume of this series, so I figured it was safe to pick up the next couple volumes. Unfortunately, although this volume definitely had some good points, I didn't like it nearly as much as the first one, and there are signs that I might like the third volume even less.

If you disliked volume 1's number-heavy focus on RPG-like stats and skills, it might be best not to continue on with the series, because this volume continues in the same vein and even manages to get worse after a certain point. For most of the book, the long examinations of new or leveled up skills are at least followed by or interwoven with battle scenes, but later on Spider MC gains a new ability that results in those stats and skill examinations being the sole focus for pages at a time. Yes, the new skills were usually pretty interesting and/or cool (if increasingly likely to turn Spider MC into yet another overpowered isekai main character), but there's only so much multi-page infodumping even I can take. Here's hoping the author finally moves beyond that in Book 3.

I did enjoy that the Middle Stratum wasn't the same as the Lower Stratum but with stronger monsters. It had a completely different environment and was one of the worst possible places for Spider MC to be - her body was naturally weak against fire and heat, and her threads spontaneously combusted and were therefore useless as weapons or defense. Her efforts to expand her skills and work on a different set of strengths led to a few exciting battles - my favorites were the one against the eel and the one against the fire wyrm.

I also liked that, unlike many other isekai series, there was some focus on how being reborn in another world was affecting these characters (although they still never seemed to think about their past lives, families, and friends at all, an aspect of most modern isekai that continues to bug me). New bodies and life experiences affected all of them to varying degrees. Most of it worked for me, but the one that kind of irked me was Katia, whose changes seemed to indicate that sexuality was linked to physical form. A more diverse cast could have addressed that issue, but, well...

There were quite a few interesting revelations and developments regarding the world the reincarnated students found themselves in, and I'd really like to find out more about Ms. Oka, all the things she's hiding, and how much of it's connected to the revelations regarding Spider MC.

Unfortunately, Okina Baba's skills as an author still seem to be pretty weak, and that may increasingly become a problem. Considering the darker turn this series is taking, I don't know how much longer Spider MC's light and chatty tone (which seems to be the author's natural writing style, based on how similar the tone is to her afterwords) will be possible, and Baba's efforts to interweave different parts of the story's timeline (if that's indeed what was going on) were confusing rather than intriguing.

Well, I already have Book 3 on hand, so I guess I have one more volume before I have to make the "continue or abandon?" decision. So far odds are looking good for "abandon," though. Here's hoping that Shun's POV chapters become more interesting and that the Spider MC developments don't ruin the series' best aspects.

Additional Comments:

There were several glaring errors in this volume. For example, on page 32 Spider MC leveled a skill up from 4 to 5. Only two pages later, she leveled that same skill up from 4 to 5 again. After a certain point, I stopped paying close attention to all the stats info, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were more mistakes like that.

Extras:

A folded sheet with two full-color illustrations, one on each side: one of Spider MC in the Middle Stratum, and one of Shun and his friends and family members. Also, an afterword by the author, and several black-and-white illustrations throughout. I am still not a fan of the illustrations - the full-color ones are fine, and the monster stat pages are useful, but the story illustrations are pretty terrible, basically just sketches with amateurish greyscale airbrushing and gradients layered in. Which probably explains why there are so few story illustrations. They're obviously not the illustrator's strong suit.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (altro)

A battle between a Hero and a Demon Lord in another world somehow results in a spell entering our world and killing off an entire Classical Literature class in a Japanese high school. Every single person in that class is then reborn in another world. This book's primary protagonist (who thus far has not been given a name, unless I missed it) is reborn as a spider. Specifically, as a Small Lesser Taratect, a type of monster.

This new world is set up like a fantasy RPG. Literally. Everything anyone does gradually levels up their stats and can potentially give them special skills and titles, just like in an RPG. Unfortunately, Spider MC (the name I'll be using for the book's heroine) has no game guides she can consult - it's all trial and error in a quest to survive, because she's unfortunately stuck inside one of this world's biggest underground labyrinths with a bunch of other beings who want to kill and/or eat her.

There is a certain light novel style that I've become resigned to, a very spare first-person POV that can be annoyingly lacking in descriptions. So I'm a Spider, So What? definitely fell into that category, but surprisingly it was actually pretty good, even though I tended to forget what the various types of monsters were supposed to look like due to the general lack of detailed descriptions. The sections from Spider MC's POV were very light and breezy, despite all the monster killing and eating. She adjusted to her new life extremely quickly (she'd never been attached to her old life, with little emotional connection to either her parents or her classmates) and seemed to enjoy living in the moment and puzzling through her new world as best she could, so the immediacy of her POV worked pretty well.

Spider MC spent much of her time either level grinding, eating, trying out any new skills the Divine Voice (a voice in her head that let her know when she leveled anything up or gained new skills or titles) told her she'd acquired, or desperately trying to survive against either very strong or numerous opponents she accidentally attracted. Some of the grinding was a little boring, despite Spider MC's cheerful and occasionally macabre sense of humor, so it was a bit of a relief that she wasn't the book's only focus.

Remember how I said that the entire Classical Literature class was reborn in another world? Well, they were all reborn in this same world, although by the end of the book Spider MC still hadn't realized that. Sections from Spider MC's POV occasionally alternated with sections from another reborn character's POV, as well as a few other characters I'm assuming weren't part of the reborn class.

The other reborn character, a boy named Shun who was reborn as Schlain Zagan Analeit, fourth prince of the Kingdom of Analeit, had a completely different experience than Spider MC - a different view of how the skills and points worked, differently allocated stats, and a different set of knowledge. It was interesting to see how the world worked from his perspective rather than Spider MC's, and I'm looking forward to the moment when their paths cross and Spider MC is potentially able to learn more about all the things she can currently only guess at. Assuming that Shun and Spider MC don't kill each other, considering that he'd view her as any other monster while she'd view him as a human who'd try to burn her alive if she let him.

One thing I'm really hoping that future volumes will deal with more: the issues involved with being reborn into a body that doesn't match your sense of self at all. Unless the reality is that the characters' new bodies really do match their inner selves, in which case that could be interesting as well, depending on how the author chooses to handle it. Crossing my fingers that Okina Baba doesn't opt to just completely ignore this aspect - I'm particularly thinking of the potential issues surrounding Kanata's rebirth as Katia.

There was so much focus on setup and getting Spider MC leveled up that not much happened in this particular volume, so I'm hoping that the next volume has more forward movement beyond "Spider MC enters a new area, kills and eats things, and gains new skills." That said, odds are looking good that I'll be reading at least a few volumes of this. I bought this first volume on a whim and was not expecting to enjoy it as much as I did.

Extras:

A brief afterword by the author (whose voice reads exactly like Spider MC's), several black and white illustrations throughout, and two full-color illustrations on a folded sheet. I wasn't really a fan of the illustrations, but they were often the best guide I had to what many of the monsters might look like.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (altro)