James Nicoll Reviews

2008’s Salvation of a Saint is the second novel in Keigo Higashino’s Detective Galileo police procedural series. The 2012 English translation is by Alexander O. Smith.

Yoshitaka Mashiba informs his wife Ayane that as she has failed to get pregnant despite a year of marriage, he will be discarding her in favour of an unnamed woman.

Ayane leaves for Sapporo, ostensibly because her father is doing poorly. She leaves her house key with her favourite student, Hiromi Wakayama… who also happens to be Yoshitaka’s secret lover. Hiromi visits the house and is horrified to discover Yoshitaka’s dead body.

Yoshitaka drank poisoned coffee. Murder or suicide?

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Izumi Suzuki’s 1983¹ Set My Heart on Fire is a mainstream semiautobiographical novel. First published as Hato ni hi wo tsukete! Dare ga kesuin [Ignite (one’s) heart! Who will extinguish (it)?], the 2024 English translation is by Helen O’Horan.

Twenty-three-year-old model Izumi fills her days and nights with music, sex, and drugs. What better way to spend the early 1970s?

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Insomniacs After School, Volume 8 is the eighth tankōbon in Makoto Ojiro’s contemporary manga series. Serialized in Shogakukan’s seinen manga magazine Weekly Big Comic Spirits, Insomniacs After School has been ongoing since May 2019. The English translation of Volume 8 was released in 2024.

Grumpy insomniac Ganta Nakami and ebullient insomniac Isaki Magari bonded over their discovery that the only place either can sleep is their school’s observatory. Various consequences followed: to keep using the observatory, the pair had to restart the astronomy club. More significantly for Ganta and Isaki, they eventually realized that they were a couple.

Ganta cannot sleep because he fears what the next day will bring. It may be ominous that Volume 8 begins with a discussion of Isaki’s health.

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1989’s The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories is a collection of Japanese science fiction stories. The editors are credited as John L. Apostolou and Martin H. Greenberg.

Various quirks of how I track books are going to bite me on the ass with this book. I’ve only myself to blame.

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Masaoki Shindo’s RuriDragon (Japanese: ルリドラゴン, Hepburn: Ruridoragon) is a Japanese modern-day fantasy manga series. Originally a one-shot published in Shueisha’s Jump Giga magazine in December 2020, RuriDragon has been serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump starting in June 2022. Currently, installments appear on the Viz site. For example, issues 19 to 24, which I assume will become volume 4.

The latest revelation confronting half-human, half-dragon Ruri Aoki is that she now secretes a venom not unlike toad venom. Mildly toxic, the venom may also have psychoactive properties… to which only Ruri is exposed.

Having lost another half-day of school she can ill-afford, Ruri returns to class, only to encounter a purely mundane problem: bullying.

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Kana Akatsuki’s 2025 Violet Evergarden, Volume 1 (Japanese: ヴァイオレット・エヴァーガーデン, Hepburn: Vaioretto Evāgāden) is the first book in an alternate-world light novel series. Illustrations are by Akiko Takase. The anime is eye-catching.

No sanctioned English translation exists of Violet Evergarden. However, a fan translation attracted my attention, so I thought I’d give it a read.

Auto Memory Dolls began as assistive devices for persons unable to write. They were machines that could transcribe voice into print. Years later, people still use Auto Memory Dolls, but these Dolls are quite different from the original model. They are humans rather than devices.

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1951’s Mästerdetektiven Blomkvist lever farligt is the second volume in Astrid Lindgren’s Kalle Blomkvist series. Originally translated into English as Bill Bergson Lives Dangerously¹—the current English translation is titled Living Dangerously and was translated by Susan Beard.

As established in the previous volume, thirteen-year-old self-proclaimed master detective Kalle Blomkvist and his chums Eva-Lotta and Anders reside in Lillköping, a town so small it has but two proper streets. How on Earth can living there be in any way dangerous?

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2023’s Delicious in Dungeon, Volume 14 is the fourteenth tankōbon in Ryoko Kui’s secondary-world comedy-fantasy manga series. Originally published as Danjon Meshi, Delicious in Dungeon appeared in Enterbrain’s Harta. Volume 14 was translated into English in 2024 by Taylor Engel.

Laios and his dungeon-delving companions (half-elf mage Marcille, halfling security expert Chilchuck, dwarf fighter Senshi, and cat-beastkin ninja Izutsumi) set out to save Laios’ dead sister Falin. They found themselves in a struggle to save the world from a ravenous extradimensional being, the Winged Lion.

Laios outwitted the Winged Lion. The story isn’t quite over just yet. There are still consequences to be dealt with.

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2004’s Boredom is the first tankōbon of Tsugumi Ohba’s contemporary fantasy manga series, Death Note. Illustrations are by Takeshi Obata. Death Note was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 2004 to 2006.

Existence in the Shinigami realm is exquisitely tedious. The only alternative appears to be to embrace death, something the supernatural beings are loathe to do. Stagnation and decline are terrible, but better than immediate total extinction.

Ryuk has a sudden inspiration. He knows how to entertain himself. Step one: cast his Death Note into the mortal realm.

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2016’s Usotoki Rhetoric Volume 7 is the seventh tankōbon in Ritsu Miyako’s historical mystery manga series. Usotoki Rhetoric was published in Bessatsu Hana to Yume from June 26, 2012, to March 26, 2018. The English translation of Volume 7 was published in 2024.

Kanako Urabe is a living lie detector. Iwai Soma is a talented but indolent private detective. Together, they fight crime! Or at least solve just enough mysteries to fend off homelessness and starvation.

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