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Easygoing Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord (Light Novel) #2
Easygoing Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord: Production Magic Turns a Nameless Village into the Strongest Fortified City (Light Novel) Vol. 2
GOING BALLISTIC!Van is hard at work using his past-life knowledge and production magic to enhance his little hamlet in exile. This time around, he's built some beefy ballistae and blasted a forest dragon! Soon the king himself is swinging by for an impromptu royal visit, and a newly discovered dungeon has adventurers flooding in. With all this hustle and bustle revitalizing the village, there's no way things could take a turn for the worse...right?!
Kindle Edition
Published April 4, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 23, 2024
If last volume review I'd withheld a star because of Van.
I'd give another extra star here in this volume for Arte sake. Surprisingly I found myself anticipating possibility that a spin off for Arte can happen.
She seems so timid and like a damsels who always got saved.
But here she is decapitating wyvern and a truly scary one army of a human and two wood dolls.
I'd give another extra star here in this volume for Arte sake. Surprisingly I found myself anticipating possibility that a spin off for Arte can happen.
She seems so timid and like a damsels who always got saved.
But here she is decapitating wyvern and a truly scary one army of a human and two wood dolls.
April 22, 2024
Next volume
I am looking forward to the next book. I read the web novel back before this was published and always wanted more. Hope there are several more books to come.
I am looking forward to the next book. I read the web novel back before this was published and always wanted more. Hope there are several more books to come.
May 23, 2024
Easygoing Territory Defense’s second volume is the very definition of wasted potential.
Coming off the back of a strong opening installment, the series’ sequel continues Van’s lordly adventures as his nameless village comes under the attention of new potential allies and foes. The sequel’s story centres around two new major events for Van and the village. The first introduces Van to a new possible ally, the king, while the second expands the series’ view of the continent as a neighbouring nation prepares to invade.
As a plot for a generic light novel fantasy sequel, the story is fine, if a little reductive. It hits all the notes you’d expect from a kingdom-building series, right down to the king’s abnormal exuberance over potential growth. Unfortunately for this series, my read of it has come at a time when I’ve finally discovered the difference between a good generic series and a bad one: potential.
Don’t get me wrong, potential isn’t all a series needs to be good; far from it, but it does go a long way towards keeping me invested.
With the potential that Easygoing Territory Defense creates in its first volume, it squanders in its second. Instead of exploring Arte’s stigmatised puppeteer powers, expanding Apkallu culture, or even introducing a new species to the village, the story instead decides to take a well-trodden path filled with one-dimensional characters and events created to highlight the protagonist’s brilliance. There’s nothing about the King’s plot line or the plot line involving an invading force that hasn’t been done before, and if you’d have given me this volume to read without the front cover, it would’ve taken me several attempts before I would’ve named this one.
It’s frustrating because there’s so much good in this series that it could stand out from the crowd in a genre mired in mediocrity. It needs direction. It needs an endgame. Otherwise, I can foresee the series swimming around in circles until it ends abruptly on a hiatus.
I was planning on writing more on this volume, but I think I’ve said everything that needs to be said. The volume’s story is fine, but I can’t help but think of what this series could’ve become. All the elements are there, ready for an entertaining kingdom-building series; I just think that the second volume took the series in the wrong direction. Thankfully, the synopsis for the third volume is out, and it looks like it’s finally dealing with Arte’s powers.
Coming off the back of a strong opening installment, the series’ sequel continues Van’s lordly adventures as his nameless village comes under the attention of new potential allies and foes. The sequel’s story centres around two new major events for Van and the village. The first introduces Van to a new possible ally, the king, while the second expands the series’ view of the continent as a neighbouring nation prepares to invade.
As a plot for a generic light novel fantasy sequel, the story is fine, if a little reductive. It hits all the notes you’d expect from a kingdom-building series, right down to the king’s abnormal exuberance over potential growth. Unfortunately for this series, my read of it has come at a time when I’ve finally discovered the difference between a good generic series and a bad one: potential.
Don’t get me wrong, potential isn’t all a series needs to be good; far from it, but it does go a long way towards keeping me invested.
With the potential that Easygoing Territory Defense creates in its first volume, it squanders in its second. Instead of exploring Arte’s stigmatised puppeteer powers, expanding Apkallu culture, or even introducing a new species to the village, the story instead decides to take a well-trodden path filled with one-dimensional characters and events created to highlight the protagonist’s brilliance. There’s nothing about the King’s plot line or the plot line involving an invading force that hasn’t been done before, and if you’d have given me this volume to read without the front cover, it would’ve taken me several attempts before I would’ve named this one.
It’s frustrating because there’s so much good in this series that it could stand out from the crowd in a genre mired in mediocrity. It needs direction. It needs an endgame. Otherwise, I can foresee the series swimming around in circles until it ends abruptly on a hiatus.
I was planning on writing more on this volume, but I think I’ve said everything that needs to be said. The volume’s story is fine, but I can’t help but think of what this series could’ve become. All the elements are there, ready for an entertaining kingdom-building series; I just think that the second volume took the series in the wrong direction. Thankfully, the synopsis for the third volume is out, and it looks like it’s finally dealing with Arte’s powers.
July 19, 2024
Seatoh. The "edge" village. The land in the middle of nowhere. The village, merchants say, "might as well be at the end of the world" (page 26). Seatoh is filthy, impoverished, and likely to succumb to invasion from the border provinces of the neighboring kingdom. And then Van shows up.
EASYGOING TERRITORY DEFENSE v2 doesn't miss a beat. Van continues his sometimes-earnest and sometimes-comical effort to construct a modern "star city" — a form-is-function fortification whose landscape arrangement and prevailing architecture wed civilian safety and military advantage in the same bated breath. But in this volume, the kid has a running start. Business is picking up, thanks to Van's recruited adventurers slaying a dragon and some large lizard-folk. And it's an open quest for Van to obtain legitimate peerage now that his little village, formally named Seatoh, is self-sustaining. But with curiosity and rumor come calls for validation, not all of which are friendly.
Intriguingly, the even pacing and genial exploits of the previous volume gradually but perceptibly complexify. Business is good, but several shady merchants set their sights on Van's little village. The fight against local monsters is going well, but that also means countless ruffians and adventurers are keen on joining the fun. And most importantly, when Van's ally Panamera (combat tactician) beseeches royalty in a play for peerage, Scuderia's King Dino En Tsora Bellrinet takes a personal interest in Seatoh. Whoops.
Van earns the status of baron within the first 40 pages of the novel, but the bulk of the book focuses on all of the awkward and necessary trappings that come with being the lord of a dinky little village whose worth is suddenly far more than most presume. To a point, EASYGOING TERRITORY DEFENSE v2 is fluffy fun: all of the main characters are good people (e.g., King Dino isn't such a bad fellow), the author always treats the story's more sensitive and innocent characters with appropriate caution (e.g., Arte, the shy girl, gets a confidence boost; Kusala, an otherwise simpleminded adventurer, is deemed heroic and gallant), and when trouble reaches Van's doorstep, one always finds humor before stumbling into calamity (e.g., the ruffians aren't bad, just uneducated and poorly mannered; the invading troupe from Yelenetta isn't a threat, but simply lead by a guy who is impossibly stupid).
The novel pivots from its start in civil engineering to focus on provincial governance and military readiness. Van is keen on balancing his citizen's needs and the demands of the sovereign (Van: "Rather than getting fixated on profits from the new town, we had to focus on making it safe and secure," page 67).
To be sure, the book chronicles military maneuvers, complete with wyvern dive-bombers, rapid-fire ballistae, and more. But the imperatives of warfare arrive in spite of the peace Van carves for his people. And one of things this author does extraordinarily well is articulate the need for solace, goodness, sympathy, and the value of reciprocity.
Examples abound. When another tribe of apkallu merpeople arrive, Van promptly requests they exchange gifts. In a scene following Seatoh's absorption of a nearby village that fell on hard times, Ortho, an adventurer, ruminates on the tragedy of picking up all of one's belongings for a single, distant, errant hope (Ortho: "[A small village] was like their entire world, and making the decision to leave was never an easy one," page 61). And when all of those merchants and adventurers come out to the sticks to take advantage of the country-folk, they are, in short, rebuffed for being shortsighted (and Bell and Rango pledge to be honest brokers through and through). And when Bell and Rango purchase slaves to help run their new merchant business, they bring hundreds of people to Seatoh and treat them as well as one would treat a refugee. One slave woman, a warrior named Paula, sobs as she eats.
EASYGOING TERRITORY DEFENSE v2 is a fun, human story. Sure, there are dragons and kings and magic and myriad siege warfare, but so much of this novel series' supblots focus on circumventing circumstance and simply doing well by one's people.
For example, the novel series' whole concept of slavery is fascinating. Slaves aren't unusable, lower-class people; slaves are people deemed of less reciprocal value. Here, slaves can be former knights, the daughter of a fallen noble, the child of the president of a defunct company, former bards, blacksmiths on hard times, former adventurers, and so forth. These folks (or their family) lost everything and were sold away. Their humanity thus taken for granted. But once they reach the village of Seatoh, and Van's people step in to help, one understands why Paula was in tears. When Paula arrives, a villager brings her a chair to sit in, to rest. The warrior is confused. Why give a slave a chair? The old man responds: "We only just arrived here ourselves. We plopped ourselves on the ground just like you folks, and the original villagers brought us chairs" (page 107). Just like that.
Awkward and amusing plot twists unfold in the novel's latter chapters, and readers will be pressed to query whether Van's isolation in Scuderia's backwoods will really be the blessing the young man imagines. Comically, Van holds a barbeque to celebrate every achievement (e.g., birthday, new village arrivals, killing off wild beasts), but the newly fortified village of Seatoh is still vulnerable. Soon, everyone will want to learn more about "that new baron who supposedly took out a dragon" (page 106).
EASYGOING TERRITORY DEFENSE v2 doesn't miss a beat. Van continues his sometimes-earnest and sometimes-comical effort to construct a modern "star city" — a form-is-function fortification whose landscape arrangement and prevailing architecture wed civilian safety and military advantage in the same bated breath. But in this volume, the kid has a running start. Business is picking up, thanks to Van's recruited adventurers slaying a dragon and some large lizard-folk. And it's an open quest for Van to obtain legitimate peerage now that his little village, formally named Seatoh, is self-sustaining. But with curiosity and rumor come calls for validation, not all of which are friendly.
Intriguingly, the even pacing and genial exploits of the previous volume gradually but perceptibly complexify. Business is good, but several shady merchants set their sights on Van's little village. The fight against local monsters is going well, but that also means countless ruffians and adventurers are keen on joining the fun. And most importantly, when Van's ally Panamera (combat tactician) beseeches royalty in a play for peerage, Scuderia's King Dino En Tsora Bellrinet takes a personal interest in Seatoh. Whoops.
Van earns the status of baron within the first 40 pages of the novel, but the bulk of the book focuses on all of the awkward and necessary trappings that come with being the lord of a dinky little village whose worth is suddenly far more than most presume. To a point, EASYGOING TERRITORY DEFENSE v2 is fluffy fun: all of the main characters are good people (e.g., King Dino isn't such a bad fellow), the author always treats the story's more sensitive and innocent characters with appropriate caution (e.g., Arte, the shy girl, gets a confidence boost; Kusala, an otherwise simpleminded adventurer, is deemed heroic and gallant), and when trouble reaches Van's doorstep, one always finds humor before stumbling into calamity (e.g., the ruffians aren't bad, just uneducated and poorly mannered; the invading troupe from Yelenetta isn't a threat, but simply lead by a guy who is impossibly stupid).
The novel pivots from its start in civil engineering to focus on provincial governance and military readiness. Van is keen on balancing his citizen's needs and the demands of the sovereign (Van: "Rather than getting fixated on profits from the new town, we had to focus on making it safe and secure," page 67).
To be sure, the book chronicles military maneuvers, complete with wyvern dive-bombers, rapid-fire ballistae, and more. But the imperatives of warfare arrive in spite of the peace Van carves for his people. And one of things this author does extraordinarily well is articulate the need for solace, goodness, sympathy, and the value of reciprocity.
Examples abound. When another tribe of apkallu merpeople arrive, Van promptly requests they exchange gifts. In a scene following Seatoh's absorption of a nearby village that fell on hard times, Ortho, an adventurer, ruminates on the tragedy of picking up all of one's belongings for a single, distant, errant hope (Ortho: "[A small village] was like their entire world, and making the decision to leave was never an easy one," page 61). And when all of those merchants and adventurers come out to the sticks to take advantage of the country-folk, they are, in short, rebuffed for being shortsighted (and Bell and Rango pledge to be honest brokers through and through). And when Bell and Rango purchase slaves to help run their new merchant business, they bring hundreds of people to Seatoh and treat them as well as one would treat a refugee. One slave woman, a warrior named Paula, sobs as she eats.
EASYGOING TERRITORY DEFENSE v2 is a fun, human story. Sure, there are dragons and kings and magic and myriad siege warfare, but so much of this novel series' supblots focus on circumventing circumstance and simply doing well by one's people.
For example, the novel series' whole concept of slavery is fascinating. Slaves aren't unusable, lower-class people; slaves are people deemed of less reciprocal value. Here, slaves can be former knights, the daughter of a fallen noble, the child of the president of a defunct company, former bards, blacksmiths on hard times, former adventurers, and so forth. These folks (or their family) lost everything and were sold away. Their humanity thus taken for granted. But once they reach the village of Seatoh, and Van's people step in to help, one understands why Paula was in tears. When Paula arrives, a villager brings her a chair to sit in, to rest. The warrior is confused. Why give a slave a chair? The old man responds: "We only just arrived here ourselves. We plopped ourselves on the ground just like you folks, and the original villagers brought us chairs" (page 107). Just like that.
Awkward and amusing plot twists unfold in the novel's latter chapters, and readers will be pressed to query whether Van's isolation in Scuderia's backwoods will really be the blessing the young man imagines. Comically, Van holds a barbeque to celebrate every achievement (e.g., birthday, new village arrivals, killing off wild beasts), but the newly fortified village of Seatoh is still vulnerable. Soon, everyone will want to learn more about "that new baron who supposedly took out a dragon" (page 106).
October 30, 2024
I think MC needs to set boundaries. I know he is enjoying making stuff for his territory but it still feels like they are expecting too much of a child.
I still dislike the engagement. He died in his thirties and he is now 8. The author is ignoring the subject but it feels icky and disgusting to have such a plot. Author is also ignoring that our MC and his fiance are 8 and 10 years old children yet they were sent to battle. I'm sure what happened was traumatizing for adults let alone children.
I still dislike the engagement. He died in his thirties and he is now 8. The author is ignoring the subject but it feels icky and disgusting to have such a plot. Author is also ignoring that our MC and his fiance are 8 and 10 years old children yet they were sent to battle. I'm sure what happened was traumatizing for adults let alone children.
April 22, 2024
It adds some stakes but they don't really feel real because everything goes so smoothly.
This entry into the series has multiple instances of the protagonist facing a would be problem and just inventing a solution on the spot.
This entry into the series has multiple instances of the protagonist facing a would be problem and just inventing a solution on the spot.
May 15, 2024
💛💜💚💙
Wow I am obsessed with this series. I need to know what Van does next and love the development of his fortress. Hopefully Murcia and Van are reunited soon.
Wow I am obsessed with this series. I need to know what Van does next and love the development of his fortress. Hopefully Murcia and Van are reunited soon.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews