Woww well that certainly was a long volume. I mean, at 530 pages, can you even really call it a "light novel"? that's just a straight up novel at that point. Definitely the longest in the series by far.
Anyway, that aside, how was the actual story? Well this time around the villainous country from the 2nd novel is back and this time it's all out war essentially. (after leon is in jail for a bit).
The first half of the book is essentially a mix of politics as well as some adventure in a temple early on, but the second half is essentially the gigantic war. The two girls on the cover at the princesses of the warring nation.
There are some things we learn about the characters this time around, but the thing i'm really happy about is that we finally get a resolution to the Marie/Leon thing in terms of they learn the true identities about each other. it was made extremely obvious in volumes 1 and 2 who they were in relation to each other and i was just WAITING for the resolution to pop up as i found the fact that they didn't realize it yet to get old fast.
Some of the characters are interchangeable in this one, like i mistook several characters for others seeing that there is a LOT of characters in this one. like a LOT A LOT. keeping track of all the characters was definitely one of the hardest tasks.
Leon was still fun in this one, while Livia and Angie (two of the love interests) were kind of dull. They didn't really DO a whole lot. Livia gave a whole lotta friendship speeches while Angie....well angie didn't do a whole lot of anything.
In fact, i would argue the actual breakout star of this volume was Marie, the girl who replaced Livia as the protagonist. She actually had a lot of great character development in this one. She 100% took the spotlight from Leon in this volume in my opinion. We had quite a bit of backstory of her and some very nice character development as well. I know this sounds weird, but i'm actually way more interested in seeing Marie develop in the story than i am Leon. Which is impressive because starting off, i really didn't like her very much.
While Leon is more of a "Eh... i'm bored, i want a quiet life", Marie is much more of a flawed character. She's selfish, she had an awful life before she was reincarnated, and is trying to learn things and i have feeling she's going to be a better person eventually which i'm really looking forward to. Speaking of which, i hear there's actually a spin-off light novel series starring Marie. I think i'll give that a shot.
Still, if a volume's goal was to make me want to learn more about a side character that you're meant to dislike in the beginning, then kudos! you have accomplished your goal.
All in all, there was enough in here that i really enjoyed, like the marie stuff, but there was also a lot of ...meh stuff with livia and Angie as well as the annoying "stuck in jail" section of the book while they talked about politics. still, for 530 pages, i managed to get through it pretty fast and didn't feel like it overstayed its welcome too too much.
Had a good time with it and definitely looking forward to volume 4 as well as the spin-off book.
3.75 out of 4 rounded up to a 4.