Whenever Lady Rozemyne gathers an ingredient for her jureve, the elixir meant to help her control her Devouring disease, things always go splendidly according to plan until they go catastrophically awry. That's awesome for the reader, not as bad as one would think for Rozemyne, and terrifying for Ferdinand, the interminably anxious High Priest. ASCENDANCE OF A BOOKWORM #10 picks up the pace, venturing from the end of autumn, through winter, and on toward the end of springtime. In-between are numerous advances in printing technology, some sweet cash from newly earned mercantile endeavors, and two more fey-creature encounters.
ASCENDANCE OF A BOOKWORM #10 takes cautious liberty with time-skips like few other moments in the novel series thus far. And it's not without good reason: Rozemyne is firmly in place among the archducal household and her capital efforts are paying big dividends. As winter approaches, she ingratiates herself to regional noble families by introducing picture books and karuta to the children (and later milks the nobility of their coin). And as springtime approaches, the Spring Prayer once again demands the High Bishop and the High Priest journey about the duchy and bestow blessings to various farmland and its peoples.
Each event is busy work, but each round of busy work is important work. The most critical of such moments is when Rozemyne returns to Hasse to dole out punishment on behalf of the archduke. The so-called Saint of Ehrenfest is in a pinch. How does she maintain her obedience to the archduke's orders to exterminate traitors yet remain loyal to her admittedly disconnected (peasant) sense of morality and humanism? This novel actively juxtaposes Urano's world morality to Rozemyne's world morality (with the latter slowly gaining ground). Here, the narrator struggles mightily to acquiesce to the needs of the domain. Ferdinand doesn't care about executing commoners for minor faults. And Eckhart, Karstedt's eldest son, nearly foams at the mouth at his eagerness to spill a whole village worth of blood. Sure, Ferdinand, and even Justus, the sneaky tax man, show Rozemyne a small measure of respect by listening to her attempts to save the innocent, but is compassion all but dead among the nobility?
Finding the fabled "third way" never seemed more apt than tracking the moral contortions Rozemyne must maneuver to save innocent people. ASCENDANCE OF A BOOKWORM #10 is a bit heartbreaking, in how clearly it lays bare the differences in social ethics native to the nobility and those native to the common folk (Ekhart: "Let them live? To what end?"). But the author, and by extension, the narrator, engineers a solution. It's not easy, and it's not pretty, and Rozemyne internalizes the regret she feels, but a partial solution is far better than none at all.
The novel's intertwining drama pivots around the fate of Hasse and its people, but the novel's action and suspense arise during the jureve ingredient gathering. Previously, Rozemyne and friends fought off a monstrous goltze (cat-like feybeast) on the Night of Schutzaria, for the sake of collecting a purple ruelle fruit. At the time, a half-dozen soldiers, along with some of the Knights Order's best, were put to the test.
The current volume sees similar a pair of encounters. In the winter, one finds a schnesturm (powerful Siberian-tiger-like feybeast), which hoards the strength of a treacherous blizzard. And in the springtime, on the Night of Flutrane, Rozemyne must sidestep hideous talfrosch (multiplying toad-like feybeasts), to collect nectar from a massive flower called the rairen. The action is swift but exciting, and frequently involves new tactics for mana-wielding, weaponry, and trickery. Readers will likely reread the events of the Night of Flutrane a few times over, as the beautiful and mysterious environs of a mountainous, clearwater pool cast a dangerous spell over the group (thus causing more worry for one still interminably anxious High Priest).
ASCENDANCE OF A BOOKWORM #10 possesses a deceptively clean balance of what makes this novel series so curiously enduring: compelling personal investment in humanistic matters, action scenes that escalate without warning, and in the background, political drama that may or may not play out to its nearest logical conclusion. And still more weaves its way into the story: whispers prickle the ears of those who dare listen, concerning Rozemyne's fitness to be an archduke candidate; while elsewhere, Rozemyne and Ferdinand form a tentative agreement that may very well define the next ten years of their relationship.