支倉凍砂

The first volume of Spice & Wolf was one of the better light novels I've read. I finally decided to read the second volume. If you've seen the anime: the second half of season 1 covers the events of this volume. It's been long enough since I last saw the show that I'm not entirely sure which details differ, but the general events are the same.

Holo and Lawrence are still traveling together, and, with Holo's help, Lawrence is able to get a really good deal on a wagon-load of armor. Lawrence show more knows that, at this time of year, armor sells pretty well at their next stop, Ruvinheigen, and the money would bring him one step closer to his dream, settling down and opening a shop.

Then things turn very sour. Lawrence learns that his wagon-load of armor is now worth one tenth what he'd estimated. He has two days to repay his debt to the Remelio Company, which is itself close to bankruptcy because of armor's sudden drop in value. The guild Lawrence is associated with can't lend him money, and neither can other guild members. If he can't repay his debt, he'll be sold into slavery. Holo could transform into a wolf and help him escape the city, but his life as a merchant would be over and he would be on the run forever.

A good chunk of my description could be considered a spoiler, because Lawrence doesn't find out the bad news about the armor until halfway through the volume. That was one of the things I didn't like about this book: the pacing. Although the introduction of Norah, the shepherdess, was necessary, and it was nice to see Holo and Lawrence bickering and flirting, I wish Hasekura could have tightened all that up. The first half of the book was a bit of a slog for me, as I waited for something to actually happen. The second half was much more exciting.

It did not help that the writing/translation (it's hard to be sure which one is the problem) could have used some improvement. Some sentences were a little strange, such as this one, describing Holo's reaction to Lawrence's description of peaches preserved in honey: “Her eyes were moist and blurred with overflowing anticipation” (17). And this, after Lawrence learned the bad news: “Lawrence's hoarse voice was all that tied him to reality” (124). The “him” that sentence referred to was Lawrence, so Lawrence's own voice was tying Lawrence to reality. I understood the general meaning, “Lawrence is deeply upset and in shock,” but it could have been phrased better.

I also noticed that Hasekura had a bad habit of telling readers in the narrative what would have been better communicated via dialogue. For example, there was one bit near the end where it seemed like Lawrence was thinking about ways his group could avoid being taken down by wolves. However, the two paragraphs outlining a possible strategy ended with this: “Lawrence listened to Holo's hasty explanation and saw that Norah moved to do just that [kill one of the wolves]” (224). It wasn't until that point that I realized the two paragraphs of strategy were actually things Holo had been telling Lawrence and Norah. It would have been much clearer if Hasekura had written it as dialogue.

That doesn't mean I hated the book – it just means I'd hesitate to recommend it to someone who wasn't already an anime/manga/light novel fan and willing to put up with less-than-stellar writing. Spice & Wolf is still one of the better series I've come across.

The things I enjoyed about this book: Holo and Lawrence's relationship, the world details and the way they're framed, and the economics stuff. Holo and Lawrence grew a little closer in this volume, and Lawrence actually told Holo that she is special to him. But what I loved even more was Lawrence introducing Holo to his guild master in Ruvinheigen. He warned her that his fellow guild members would probably assume she was his fiancee, so she said she'd be fine with him claiming that they were lovers. Instead, he introduced her as his business partner, and was proud when he described the profit she'd helped him make in the past. Okay, so it doesn't sound very romantic, but this was coming from a guy for whom business is everything. He had pride in her as a partner, and he trusted her as a partner. I loved that.

Speaking of Lawrence and business – his identity as a merchant colored pretty much everything. It was how he viewed the world, and it was even part of his small talk. There was a bit, early on, dealing with the role the Church had in the formation, development, and ongoing existence of one of the towns Lawrence was passing through, and the focus was all on trade, the flow of currency, and taxes. The Church was just one more thing with the potential to affect his business. Lawrence's mindset, and the economics in general, really worked for me in this book. I even got a chuckle out of Lawrence's revenge by way of loan near the end.

All in all, it was an okay book that would have been improved by a shorter first half. The ending was pretty satisfying, aside from the unanswered questions about Norah and Enek's future. She irked me early on in the book, mostly because of Lawrence's reaction to her (he liked how sweet, gentle, and quiet she was compared to Holo, never mind that she'd have bored him to tears in the long run). However, she later proved herself to be an awesome shepherdess, well-partnered with Enek, her dog. I wanted to know if her dream worked out, and what she decided to do with Enek. I wouldn't mind a cameo appearance in a future book.

Extras:

Eight color pages (five color illustrations), seven black-and-white illustrations, and a short afterword written by the author.

Rating Note:

I never know how to rate light novels. Had the writing/translation been better, I might have given it 4 stars. The second half was exciting, and I was thrilled to actually be able to understand all the economics stuff. Or maybe 3.5, because the beginning was so slow. I'm settling on 3.

(Original review, with read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

This volume contained precious little economics, but made up for it with a healthy dose of the desperate and underhanded side of human nature, though the sometimes subtle, realistic presentation of such characteristics might make it difficult for some people to notice that fact. It also dealt a bit with the complications of a collision between pragmatism, faith, and empirical fact. Much like volume 10, it also presented the uncomfortable truth that sometimes the economic solution is the show more best, most peaceful solution, despite its lack of high-minded idealism, in a world where idealism typically gets (ab)used as a tool of oppression.

I wonder sometimes how cognizant the author is of the fact his writings so well capture the reasons altruism sounds good but only ends in desolation when allowed to run free, while "enlightened" selfishness navigates treacherous paths to a peaceful conclusion. These are not fairy-tail endings, but that doesn't mean they're bad endings. show less

This volume spent a fair bit of time setting things up for the climax with no significant hints of what was to come, and the result was very little action or economic drama until rather closer to the end than one might expect after reading the preceding four volumes. Surprisingly, this did not in any way detract from the quality of the tale, because this freed the author to spend much more time than usual focusing on the biggest strength of the series: character development.

The evolving show more relationship between Lawrence and Holo has been established as caring and, in some ways, quite solid, after the four previous volumes -- but fears about the future come into play in a manner more believable than they might seem if I simply explained them here (and I'd have to mark spoilers if I did that anyway). Other characters, particularly another merchant who becomes increasingly important as the story goes on, get their own developmental treatment, too, and a couple of them stand out from the page as vividly realized by the author's representation.

After five books, one might be tempted to think that the ongoing series is losing some of its susceptibility to suspension of disbelief, which might lose some of a reader's interest, as a result of the improbable frequency of Big Problems rearing their ugly heads in volume after volume. This is a significant danger in long, ongoing novel series, as the author must find some way to keep things interesting, to serve the demonstrated interests of all the people who have been buying new additions to the series over the years, and still keep things fresh.

Luckily, the author of Spice & Wolf seems cognizant of these challenges, and helps the reader's suspension of disbelief in small ways. The most obvious is where the characters themselves have begun to recognize, and remark upon, the unusual frequency of major economic crises in their lives. Another -- and often more difficult to pull off if the author does not write character development very well, though Hasekura Isuna does possess the requisite talent -- is to slow the pace of action and devote more time to sounding out the depths of the characters, which plays very well in this volume.

If I have any complaints at all in this volume, they are as follows:

First, I think I may have detected some clumsy language in the narrative as a result of the translator's work, though it was not significant. The most notable incident was a character's use of the term "like", which people familiar with anime at least should recognize as the translation of a common Japanese term employed (especially in anime about teenagers) as a stand-in for romantic feelings, but in the context in which a character uses it in this book the better translation would have been "love". To many native English speakers I would expect the use of the term "like" to be either confusing or overly trivial, in context.

Second, Lawrence makes a business decision (at Holo's prompting, at one point) regarding Holo's own circumstances that I found highly suspect -- that is, even if I imagined myself feeling a similar level of avarice to Lawrence's, I would never have even considered it. Having considered it long enough to discuss it with Holo, though, the author's portrayal of her does an excellent job of making the decision much more believable because of the manner of her support for it.

Neither of these substantially detracted from my enjoyment, and they have no notable effect on my ultimate decision of how to rate the book. show less

Alas, I'll keep this short.

I enjoyed the heck out of this story. I'm invested in the main characters, and I found the story absorbing. I felt disappointed every time I had to put the book down to do something else.

I'm quite amused by the fact that, apart from one event near the beginning of the story, every bad thing that happened was motivated by the danger posed by government -- even when the government in question was the church. Yes, even the danger in the forest, because it they weren't show more trying to slip past the tax man Holo would not have been as constrained in how she dealt with the upstart god-wolf.

I eagerly look forward to reading the next book in the series. show less