James Nicoll Reviews

Witch and Mercenary, Volume One is the first volume in Chohokiteki Kaeru’s Witch and Mercenary light novel series. Illustrations are by Kanase Benchi.

A prince determined to prove to his father that the prince (and not his twin brother) should inherit the throne has assembled an impressive army and set out to obliterate the witch Siasha. Witches being notorious dangerous, surely killing one would prove the prince’s worthiness.

Another possibility is that the witch will virtually annihilate the mercenary army, along with the prince, which is what happens. This greatly simplifies the succession, but it leaves surviving mercenary Zig Crane with a problem. Who will pay him now that the prince is dead?

Siasha is alive, rich, and the solution to Zig’s problems.

Zig will work for anyone willing to pay him. Although she is a living weapon of mass destruction, Siasha very nearly died in the fight. A bodyguard, particularly one familiar with human ways, would be useful. Siasha hires Zig.

Siasha has had two centuries of avoiding and fending off human armies. She is tired of being forever hunted. Zig has a solution. Ships capable of crossing the great ocean to the unknown continent known to be on the other side have recently been developed. Siasha and Zig can join the first expedition, travel to the new land, and search for a culture that does not try to kill witches on sight.

The expedition notices two curious facts about the unknown continent. The land teems with ravening monsters eager to kill and eat unwary visitors. So do the coastal waters. As far as Zig is aware, only he and Siasha survive landing on the unknown continent.

Whereas Zig and Siasha’s homeland is a war-torn land, this realm is free of wars pitting human against human. This is because the humans (and the other intelligent creatures mingling with them) have had to focus all their energies on fending off ravening monsters. Hence no work for mercenaries. There are, however, adventurers! Adventurers are just like mercenaries, except that they only kill monsters and they consider mercenary a four-letter-word.

Siasha signs up as an adventurer. Zig, for reasons that seem compelling to him, is content to remain an unaccredited bodyguard.

There is much they don’t know about their new home. Survival may not be as easy as it appears.

~oOo~

As one might guess from the fact that Zig survived two total-party kills, his skills include not dying. One might say that not dying is his primary ability.

Well, this book wasn’t great. The narrative is meandering and episodic, and the prose is unengaging. What kept me going was the pesky fact that I didn’t happen to have another translated book handy to replace Witch and Mercenary in my self-imposed review regimen.

As the story itself was meh, I amused myself considering the author’s worldbuilding choices and whether the consequences of such choices were intended or accidental. Choices such as:

• The people on the continent speak the exact same language as they do in Zig and Siasha’s homeland. Neither Zig nor Siasha considered this noteworthy. Was every land settled from the same founding culture? and recently enough that languages have not diverged?

• Following up on the above, the presence of ravening monsters that well-armed people struggle to overcome raises the question of how primitive humans survived. If humans and the other intelligent beings are recent arrivals, that would eliminate that issue.

• Siasha and Zig consider witches and humans different species¹ because one can work magic and the other cannot. They look identical². It turns out things work a bit differently on the unknown continent: everyone can do a least a little magic³. Are Siasha and Zig descended from humans who somehow bifurcated into dissimilar races? Are they still interfertile?

I suspect these questions don’t matter to the author as much as they do to me. As I don’t plan to read further in the series, I will never know.

Witch and Mercenary, Volume One is available here (Seven Seas Entertainment), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Bookshop UK), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: I wonder whether the term used in the original Japanese has the same connotations as ​‘species’ does in English?

2: Siasha is incredibly attractive, but it’s not clear if that’s a witch thing or she just happens to be pretty. If her lifespan is artificially extended, perhaps she can also work cosmetic magic, although subtle body-modifying magic does not seem compatible with her usual spells.

There is no obvious reason Siasha could not pose as a regular human. Perhaps she considers it beneath her.

3: The folks on the new continent only have a little magic, but… Siasha discovers that they are more skillful with magic than she is, because they have to be.