Brunhild - Tome 01

Brunhild the Dragonslayer Light Novel #1

by Yuiko Agarizaki, Ao Aso (illustrator)

Eden… A place of perfection… A place where man and beast live side by side in harmony… Eden’s protector, the silver dragon, regularly visits retribution upon those who would bring harm to paradise. But when the dragon discovers a human girl on the shores of Eden, he decides to raise her as his own. He teaches her that if she is to be welcomed into God’s Kingdom after death, she must not harbor hatred in her heart. But when the dragon’s life is mercilessly snuffed out by human machinations, the girl must choose whether to heed the dragon’s dying wish and stay the course of righteousness…or walk a path of vengeance.

Genres: Light Novel, Fantasy, Manga, Drama, Action

320 pages, Paperback

First published June 10, 2022

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, that was bleak. Mixing Abrahamic myth with Germanic epic (the Garden of Eden and the Siegfried cycle, to be specific), this tells the tragic story of a girl ripped from both worlds who feels her choices have been taken from her. There are no happy endings, or even hopeful ones - just operatic despair in a world that won't allow its characters anything else.

[Aaron · Rating 1 out of 5]

And so one encounters another awkward, inexpert, and generally bad light novel. BRUNHILD: THE DRAGONSLAYER is a campfire fable masquerading as a professional novel: garish plot holes, abundant overwriting, transparent and uninteresting character development, and copious deus ex machina contrivances that routinely sour an already ill-fit narrative. This is a bad book.

Whatever the reason or motivation to author and publish fantasy stories about singularly driven protagonists who luckily encounter singularly ignorant secondary characters, one can never seem to escape the occasional flush of melancholy that comes with encountering a book that fails on so many levels so earnestly and spectacularly. BRUNHILD: THE DRAGONSLAYER focuses its gaze on a shipwrecked little girl, raised by a silver dragon, and her eventual quest to murder the naval officer who killed her adoptive father. However, this fairytale of anger, deceit, revenge, and the withering whispers of adolescent hope never really finds its footing.

Brunhild is not a particularly interesting character to follow, but she's all readers have. In a fantasy world beset with multiple warring nations (which readers never learn anything about), advanced technology (which readers never see), and heightened geopolitical drama (which readers never encounter), this silver-haired teenager is the centerpiece of a private war. As such, when the little girl's peace on a paradisial island is blown to bits by the Norvelland Imperial Army, she's captured and turned into a political officer for the publicity ambitions of an apparently small and resource-starved country. Brunhild goes along with the ruse, if only to bide her time until she can settle the score with the man whose weaponry killed her father.

At the fore, the challenge with BRUNHILD: THE DRAGONSLAYER is that each problem with how the story is written and structured ultimately feeds or coalesces into the next. No single issue is greater than another, but rather, taken as a whole, the book's poor writing style swells and magnifies to the point where it's impossible to look away.

For example, the author's tendency to inject random backstory and retroactive continuity to fill in obvious storytelling gaps speaks to extraordinarily poor planning and a propensity to ignore key worldbuilding details. Why conjure a backstory for a random character who appears in only one scene and has only four lines of dialogue? Perhaps the scene's sudden and incipient relevance wasn't an issue until now. Why wait until one is well past the book's midpoint to explain the political landscape of a country the main character has inhabited from the onset? Perhaps the relevance of the territory's cultural details' were likewise immaterial until the author needed them to be.

Narrative miscues that skew continuity are not uncommon, and here, they occur alongside a bevy of overwriting and shallow character development. Whether any one issue is meant to paper-over or hide any other issue is anyone's guess. For example, when a city is attacked by white dragons, the author spends two paragraphs explaining the actions of a random bystander, an old man, whose awe and confusion vacillate wildly. Why include this narrative aside? Perhaps the author realized, only 10 pages from the end, that the book has only a few named characters in a bustling capital city and that readers have no idea what the average resident is like.

Regarding the main characters, Brunhild is a wily teenager who possesses the subterfuge and curiosity native to the eternal deity who raised her. However, her narrowmindedness ironically posits her encounters with iridescently transparent secondary characters as being similarly, rudimentarily uninteresting. Brunhild befriends a navy colonel, as well as a young man, Sigurd, the son of the officer who killed her dragon-father. These relations aren't bad, in and of themselves, but their arcs rest on such clear and obvious trajectories that one cannot be blamed for finding them interminably boring from the onset. Sigurd, age 17, is a pissy young man constantly trying to prove himself. As such, he's prone to admiring impressive feats of strength, he's easy for others to manipulate (emotionally), and he's blind to his own limitations.

The overwriting smudges things large and small. Of the small, readers stumble into numerous ventures of hyper-literal language, salty affectations for bad grammar or syntax, and myriad occasion for utterly atrocious fight scene coordination.

Alas, one ponders what little a translator can do when the result is as awfully comical as, "The white dragon let out a final cry like a honking goose and crumbled, then died" (page 157). Other examples are practical but cringeworthy, such as, "But now the white sands were red, as if they'd been splattered with crimson paint" (page 7) and "She attacked Sigurd with words sharp like blades of ice" (page 110).

These stubborn and uncooperative missives typically accompany passively overwritten passages that complicate otherwise straightforward dialogue. Did Sigurd want to hold Brunhild's hand? No. Instead, "He would have liked to hold her hand tightly, if possible" (page 95). Is Brunhild querying whether a religious zealot believes in her plan? Not quite. Instead, she says, "I understand if there is any confusion" (page 103). So much of BRUNHILD: THE DRAGONSLAYER is written in passive voice that any number of the book's strange or farcical lyricisms are worth plucking for such vexing analysis.

The story's secondary characters, all low-level military officers, are one-dimensional and lack complex agency (again, more like a fable than a novel). The lack of effective storytelling depth afforded the characters, the setting, and the worldbuilding, likewise extends to the book's fantastical themes. For one, this book about dragons doesn't do the creatures any favors in terms of how it renders them in readers' imaginations. Further, when exceedingly random story (fantasy) elements yank the story off the rails in the Third Act, one wonders whether any editor with any common sense questioned why such a story was worth publishing in the first place.

The action/fight scenes bear all of the evidence of an author who didn't conduct any research and likely wrote the scenes on the fly. How does one block a punch and lose a glove as a result? Bad writing, apparently. Even more awkwardly, when a character is clawed from a giant dragon "through the flesh of his right leg" (page 90), Brunhild assuages further movement with a delightful bit of nonsense: "It's no use trying to stand with that wound [..] If you move around too much, you'll tear your tendon, and there's no coming back from that" (page 91). In the novel's final scene, a character is written as "fir[ing] his thunder" (page 157), whatever that means, despite the book having clearly explained that the character's powers are lightning-derived. Whoops.

The latitude afforded to writers to do what they may with stories containing imaginary creatures, in imaginary lands, with imaginary abilities comes up short when the narrative conjures wild, irrelevant, and preposterous solutions to generally common, event-driven challenges. For example, when Brunhild and Sigurd enter the heart of the city to defend the populace from attacking dragons, they have no weapons, except, for Brunhild, who randomly appears "bearing the legendary dragon-killing sword Falchion in her hand" (page 91). Too bad the sword was never mentioned before, breaks during the fight, and is never spoken of again.

In another example, readers learn about the sudden and mysterious substance, called ether, which comprises the physical makeup of gods and angels. Why is this information relevant? Actually, it's not relevant to the story at all, but the author is 12 pages from the end, and must apparently contrive a solution where none presently exists. Can't destroy the bad guy (who appears in only a dozen pages) who has made himself inhuman? Well, why not let the protagonist wield deus ex machina to invent something that can destroy him? Problem solved, right?

The most hilariously bad example is the book's concept of the Balmung Cannon, a rumored weapon wielded by the naval officer who killed Brunhild's dragon-father. Is it a physical cannon? Is it a supernatural ability? Is it part of a naval warship? The term is bandied about, but readers don't learn what the darn thing is until they're roughly 120 pages into the 167-page novel. The reveal is just as awkward and ridiculous as everything else in the book.

And then there are story elements that plainly constitute terrible writing. The author's concept of dragon-speak, a universal translator language, is fairly nifty. That is, until the author uses the concept to justify characters speaking different languages, characters conveniently possessing telepathy, and characters acquiring other, heightened empathic abilities: "Understanding the True Language meant being fluent in every language of the past — and into the future" (page 42).

Bad logic is frustratingly common. The best (worst) example occurs when one learns that a certain naval captain "had said that, after his expedition had ended, he was going to invade another ocean" (page 147). Wait. He's avoiding familial responsibility by invading a whole ocean? How in the world does one naval officer, of a single "amphibious assault ship," from a resource-deprived nation, conjure the wherewithal to invade a whole ocean on his own?

Or how about the moment that brings the core cast together for the final showdown? Following a scene break, readers enter to read: "Was it a coincidence that the newborn dragonslayer came to that park?" (page 148). Yes. Absolutely. That is the very definition of a contrived story.

BRUNHILD: THE DRAGONSLAYER is a campfire fable masquerading as a professional novel: Average characters with outsized problems turn to silly or unreasonable solutions, often from the trembling hands of an amateurish demiurge, to conjure a life lesson that is wholly undemanding and rote.

[Cassonade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peut être un peu déçus par le style d'écriture et la rapidité des scènes, j'aurais préféré que l'autrice prenne plus de temps dans la narration. Néanmoins, l'histoire reste agréable à suivre. Son point fort réside dans les relations entre les personnages ainsi que leurs motivations profondes. On est emporté dans l'esprit de Brunhild et les personnages qui gravitent autour, au point de ne plus pouvoir lâcher sa lecture en fin d'œuvre.

[Ceraphina · Rating 1 out of 5]

no

[FaclessOneLN · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dark, powerful, and utterly spellbinding. From the mind of Yuiko Agarizaki and brought to life through Aoaso’s illustrations, Brunhild the Dragonslayer is more than just a tale of tragic revenge.

Brunhild is a rarity when talking about light novels. Take away the illustrations, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who wouldn’t consider this series a serious piece of literary work. While on the outside the story is one of simplistic revenge, as Brunhild swears revenge on humanity for killing her dragon father, peel away the outer layer and you’ll find a novel that deals with serious and mature struggles.

At the heart of what makes this series great is Brunhild herself. Her tale of revenge reveals a series of complex inner turmoils as her dragon half (espousing a pureness of heart) and her human half (overcome with rage and hatred) wrestle with the decision to kill her father’s murderer.

The theme is dealt with well throughout the novel and is best utilised in Brunhild’s scenes alongside Sigrun. It’s through her conversations with him that we get some of the few moments where her mask slips, likely because Sigrun is her older brother and one of the few humans she trusts and sees as a friend rather than an enemy. As they converse, Brunhild litters several apologies—moments where her conscience breaks through as a way to warn Sigrun of the horrible ordeal she is about to put him and the rest of the nation through for the sake of her revenge.

At the same time as we see Brunhild’s struggles, we also see how her humanity and her gifts from Eden allow her revenge to manifest. By eating the fruits of Eden’s paradise, she has the latent ability to become an expert manipulator. To put these skills into action, the first thing she does when arriving in the land of man is read.

From research articles to newspapers and even fiction stories, she uses these to get a full picture of human society and how humans think—knowledge she wields expertly by the end of the novel, as she controls both Sachs and the members of Typhon to orchestrate a believable final showdown.

To conclude, Brunhild the Dragonslayer possesses more than the usual light novel. Part religious parable and study of the human condition, its dark and twisted tale of love and revenge will leave you shocked and spellbound.

I’d highly recommend this book to light novel and fiction lovers alike.

[Caleb Nischara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished my first new book of the year—and it was a heavy hitter right out of the gate. Brunhild the Dragonslayer is one of those rare reads that immediately stands out, not just for what it tells, but for how it tells it. As the series title might suggest, it draws heavily from the Nibelungenlied, particularly the figure of Brunhild. But what makes this book so compelling is the way it doesn’t just reference that myth—it reconstructs it, blending the core motifs, symbols, and structure of the Nibelungen legend with Judeo-Christian themes, particularly the narrative of the Garden of Eden and humanity’s expulsion from paradise. That fusion works especially well because the Nibelungenlied—despite being a cornerstone of Middle High German literature—is one of the few works from that era that stands apart from the Christian moral framework dominating its contemporaries. Its roots lie in older Germanic warrior epics like the Hildebrandslied, where values like warrior’s honor and blood vengeance take precedence over Christian compassion, humility, or submission to divine law. And Brunhild the Dragonslayer taps into that legacy in a powerful way—only to pit it directly against the Christian concept of absolute morality.

Brunhild’s story begins as one of innocence. Once welcomed as a human into Eden, she lived peacefully among its creatures, sheltered from violence and hatred. But all of that is shattered when Eden is destroyed by humans, led by her biological father, Siegbert Siegfried. Her adoptive father—a dragon—is killed in the attack, and what emerges from this loss is not the peaceful girl Eden once knew, but someone gripped by a cold, calculated rage. Brunhild integrates into human society, joins the military, forms bonds—with Colonel Sascha, who teaches her how to survive in this unfamiliar world, and with her brother Sigurd, to whom she grows genuinely close. But behind all of it lies one single goal: revenge. She wants to kill her father. And this is where things take a genuinely dark turn. Brunhild doesn’t just pursue revenge—she orchestrates massacres, she manipulates and sacrifices innocent civilians, transforming them into dragons just so she can stage a fabricated attack on the city of Nibelungen. Her aim? Kill those dragons herself, appear as a hero, and draw her father out of hiding. It’s a chilling twist—far darker than I expected—and it underscores how far she’s fallen. The same girl who once lived in harmony, untouched by hate, now channels that hate with terrifying precision.

But—and here’s where the story gets morally complex—Brunhild knows what she’s doing is wrong. That’s where the Christian framework comes back in. God’s laws are absolute, and throughout her life, her adoptive father warned her not to give in to vengeance, not to kill—but she can’t let go of her hatred. She’s painfully aware that her actions will bar her from paradise, from any chance of reuniting with her father in the afterlife, and that’s what gives this narrative its devastating weight: it’s not just her body she’s destroying in her warpath—it’s her soul. The tragedy is framed by a quiet, poetic metaphor: in the prologue, a girl enters a man’s hut. Later, we learn that the girl is Brunhild, the man her adoptive father, and the hut the afterlife. The entire novel, then, becomes a kind of confession—a recounting of her life’s path before that moment of final judgment. In the epilogue, the metaphor circles back: God, moved by pity, grants her one last meeting with her father, though she cannot enter paradise. And in that farewell, the emotional complexity of the book crystallizes. Her father is heartbroken—furious that she threw her life away on vengeance, that they’ll never be together again, but he still can’t help but weep, thanking her for loving him so fiercely that she lost herself in the grief.

On a thematic level, this book is endlessly fascinating. The more I think about the layers—honor versus morality, Eden versus exile, revenge versus redemption—the more impressed I am by the sheer ambition behind it. That said, the book does stumble when it comes to execution, particularly in how it handles narration. One of the biggest issues is the lack of a clear narrative perspective. Is Brunhild telling the story? If so, why does she describe emotions and events she couldn’t possibly know—like what other characters are feeling? If it’s an omniscient narrator, why do we still get these uneven shifts into the perspectives of Sigurd, Sascha, or side characters from scenes where Brunhild isn’t even present? There’s also the problem of inner monologue: characters’ thoughts are often italicized without warning, and it’s not always clear whose thoughts we’re reading. The result is a disjointed reading experience that sometimes muddies the emotional throughline. Important scenes are given the spotlight they deserve—especially the big plot beats—but the more personal, character-driven moments often feel rushed or underdeveloped. For a story built so heavily on Brunhild’s internal descent, that’s a missed opportunity. It makes it harder to connect with her, even when her story is clearly meant to be deeply affecting.

All in all, this book is thematically and symbolically rich—arguably brilliant in the ideas it explores—but still rough around the edges when it comes to execution. The narrative voice is inconsistent, and the emotional core could’ve landed harder with more refined pacing and character insight. Still, this was an incredibly rewarding start to my reading year. It’s the kind of book that keeps turning over in your mind long after you’ve finished it, and I’m genuinely excited to see how the next volumes expand on this world. Flawed, yes—but also bold, thoughtful, and unlike anything else I’ve read in recent memory.

[John Good Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most realistic story with dragons, the characters speak as if out of reality, their flaws and manners are great, but greater are the descriptions the author gives. You'll be torn between rooting or not for Brunhild. Is she really the daughter of the dragon or a human child? The whimsical and quite philosophical narrative takes a dark turn soon as Brunhild is not a good person, or at least the circumstances lead her to it. Manipulative and evil, yet full of love and pain for her loved one

NOW THE DOWNSIDES....

The book crams a lot of information, so it can be considered a light novel . It also touches sensitive subjects and tabboo ones, too.

Having spoken with the author though, this is evidently a work she has put all of herself into and it shows heavily in the writing. First book I reread as soon as I finished it easy and beautiful read

[Zevitjoss · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant revenge story set within a world inspired by both Christianity and Norse mythology. The brilliant world building is not just for aesthetics, the author uses their unique interpretations of Christian teachings to create brilliant emotional conflicts for the main character. Being torn by between what she was taught about God, her inherent humanity, and her burning desire to avenge her the dragon that so kindly raised her the titular main character is put into a creative yet simple dilemma that will leave you wondering even by the end what is the right choice.

[Jesse Bartel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't read many light novels but I enjoyed this one. Combining lore from a couple of cultures, we are left with a girl hellbent on revenge in the name of her adoptive dragon-father. Brunhild is bleak but thoughtful and takes time to let its few main characters walk around their morals and values.

[Ellen Scheid · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe it was due to translation, but the writing in this book was extremely immature. Don't get me wrong, there was blood and gore and other adult themes...but the actual text on the page was choppy and hopped around in perspective. This was a hard book to follow at times, but I wanted to see Brunhild to her end, so I finished reading instead of returning it to the library.

[Kevin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Its fairly bad, The Main Character Brunhild is overall a very boring a bland character, and the ending is very predicable, its a darker story but does it poorly.

They also removed almost every review on Amazon that was negative, at this time there is a single review left.

[B Sai Sushma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Globalization is amazing - this is a Norse/Scandinavian-based myth (from Prose and Poem Edda), reinterpreted and presented in a Japanese light novel form, that I read in an English translated version.
Beautiful.
Very anime-esque story.

[Naomi Walls · Rating 4 out of 5]

My son, an avid anime and manga fan, asked me to read this book. I was not excited about it honestly but I said I would. It was better than I had anticipated. It read like a transcribed anime that was dubbed in English but it actually made it easier to visualize.

Quick read, entertaining.

[Sido · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wtf did I just read??

[Amber · Rating 3 out of 5]

What the helly

Gave strong Buffy/angelus vibes but all the worst and saddest parts

3.5

[Ghostea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yukiko Agarizaki's “Brunhild The Dragonslayer” blurs the line between a light novel and the more traditional definition of a literary work. With another book in the series, “Brunhild the Princess of Dragons,” the release stands on its own and is a fully enclosed story. Moreover, Agarizaki's themes are far removed from the expected tropes of a typical fantasy light novel; there are no isekai, cute girls, and comedic beats. “Brunhild The Dragonslayer” is exceptionally bleak, brutally honest about the inherent fallacies of human nature, and approaches themes of revenge without catharsis or romanticization. This is not a cut-and-dry light fantasy affair that one would expect to carry the ‘light novel' label.

I loved this one; it may be my favorite novel read thus far this year. You can read my full review here:

https://asianmoviepulse.com/2024/05/l...

[Hakyoins · Rating 1 out of 5]

The premise and plot was very promising, but unfortunately the writing was mediocre and the translation was awkward.