Oh boy, where do I even start. The second volume takes place five years after the first. Victoria is married to Jeffrey and living with Nonna in Shen, but they’re now coming back to Ashbury. Despite spending that much time in Shen, we only get surface level view of their life there. Most of their progress was done off-page too, so we don’t actually see anything from Shen. Nonna, who learned the Shenese martial arts, has grown up to be an absolute beast of a fighter… but this wasn’t shown enough, which I feel is a huge wasted potential.
Unlike how she was in the first volume, Victoria has lost her edge. She’s now more motherly and family-oriented. There’s nothing wrong with that, but not when the original personality is mostly shoved aside to make “mother” the main trait. Despite preaching to prioritize happiness, Victoria is mostly critical of Nonna’s tomboyish antics and lack of proper etiquette. Mostly. Because sometimes she’s not, as if she just remembered her original personality and reverted back to that for one scene. It’s inconsistent.
There are way too many things that came off as distasteful. Jeffrey’s jealousy towards Victoria’s friendship with Zaharo isn’t cute. They’ve been married for FIVE YEARS now, so you’d think he’d have more faith in her. He’s also constantly worrying and acting overly protective, as if he doesn’t know her combat abilities. Victoria thinking of sacrificing her hobby and friendship to reassure Jeffrey is also pretty gross, but thankfully this issue does get addressed by the book. Just that one though. The rest of Jeffrey’s jealous act was treated as him being a loving husband.
Overall this was more adventurous than the previous volume, but the tone is still flat. The situation with Auri was handled well though, because as much as Victoria and especially Nonna want to shower everyone with positivity, sometimes it just doesn’t work. It is Auri’s choice not to be a nice person, and her not converting after receiving affection and friendship is probably the only positive thing I can say about this book. There’s nothing else I liked from it, and definitely not the weird spacing that separate lines even though they’re all from the same scene.
Nope. I’m done.
I wanted to check out Syuu’s other series too, but since people said Victoria is leagues better than their older works, I’ll have to shelf those for the time being.
Volume 2 takes the MC and her family on a treasure hunt based on encrypted clues in an old romance while she is also struggling a bit with her new life as a civilian. This in itself makes for a fun if somewhat predictable story with interesting characters. The strange thing though is that the story starts 5 years after volume, which is fine except that those mentioned struggles feel a bit odd as a result. You would except Victoria to have a bit of a better handle on whether or not she should keep training, whether she should let societal expectations dictate her or her daughter's life or whether she should visit a pub on her own. The answer to those three questions btw is (minor spoiler warning since it is very much not the core of the story) . Luckily it only takes a few pages to come to this conclusion, but it does highlight a slight disappointment we see nothing of her stay in Shen. So, a fun and entertaining read even if it had a bit of an odd start.