James Nicoll Reviews

2021’s Magus of the Library, Volume Six is the sixth tankōbon in Mitsu Izumi’s secondary-universe fantasy manga series (Toshokan no Daimajutsushi in the original Japanese). Magus has been serialized in Good! Afternoon since November 2017. The English translation appeared in 2021.

Avid bookworm Theo is prodigiously strong and nigh-invulnerable to magical influences, as revealed in the previous volume. Unfortunately for Theo, his chosen vocation is as a librarian (kafna). He is enrolled at the Great Library, which offers many employment prospects to graduates. But first Theo has to graduate. So far he’s on track to fail. His previous schooling didn’t prepare him for this extremely competitive institution.

Theo isn’t the only student struggling.

Medina is pious, diligent, high-born (well, sort of) and in all ways an exemplary daughter of House Hahal’k. She considers herself immeasurably superior to her classmates, scum and rabble all. Her attitude does not endear her to her classmates.

Actually, the haughty Medina is half-commoner. Her aristocratic father was tempted to discard her and her mother as trash, but relented and took the pair into his household, where they were treated with scorn by the other members of the household. Medina did not take this kindly. She channeled her rage at being scorned into a pursuit of academic distinction. Once she enters the library school, she is dismayed to discover that the school is filled with girls (and a few boys) who are just as motivated and hardworking as she is. Their academic achievements far outstrip hers. She has new reason to hate everyone around her.

Any other student might have been expelled as disruptive. Medina is tolerated by the authorities because her father gave the Great Library an enormous sum to take the girl off his hands. But perhaps she could be nudged into better behavior? Quite by carefully orchestrated accident, two functionaries loudly discuss the true reason that Medina was accepted, knowing that Medina is eavesdropping. She learns that she is not the academic paragon she assumed she was. She is heartbroken and furious.

Medina nearly leaves the Great Library. Only Theo’s timely intervention stops her. He suggests that he, Medina, and Dianasys (another struggling student) form a study group. Perhaps if they work together they can somehow pass.

Too bad that Theo belongs to the ethnic group Medina most despises.

~oOo~

Theo is resolutely good-natured and conciliatory, forever seeking common ground in face of extraordinary provocation, the sort of fellow who might offer people nailing him to a cross valuable carpentry advice. It is an achievement of sorts, therefore, that Medina actually manages to provoke Theo into polite but obvious anger, earning herself a very credible threat.

Happily, for all the fans who don’t want the series to devolve into Theo’s involuntary manslaughter trial, it turns out that Theo and Medina have something in common. Like Medina, Theo had a high-status father. It’s just that his father did discard an unwanted child. Theo survived only because a young girl found and adopted him as a baby. That and academic necessity and of course, Theo being the paragon of virtue that he is, is enough to win a grudging alliance.

For a series about a relentlessly upbeat kid lifting himself by his bootstraps, Magus has a lot of dark moments: poverty, infanticide, egregious sexism, genocide, bigotry of all sorts. Credit to the author for writing the story in such a way that it’s not utterly bleak and depressing¹.

Magus of the Library, Volume Six is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Apple Books), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: At least not in this volume. Foreshadowing suggests the continent is in for challenging times, and that Theo will play an important role.