By Bisu and Yukiko. Released in Japan as “Tensei Oujo wa Kyou mo Hata o Tatakioru” by Arian Rose. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Esther Sun.
This is not the final volume in the series – the eighth book is currently streaming on the J-Novel Club site, and has the standard romance novel final volume cover (heroine in wedding dress), but this does pretty much resolve all the remaining plot points that we had. This includes the love story, which takes up most of the first half of this book, and the demon lord story, which takes up most of the second half. I actually quite like the way that one shifted to the other. After the traditional Misunderstanding (TM), Rosemary has locked herself in her room and refuses to see anyone. Now, in reality this is because she’s a lovesick teenager who thinks the guy she loves is confessing to another woman, but to the rest of the palace it looks like she’s trying to protect everyone because she knows she’s possessed by the demon lord. Which is… not QUITE true, but honestly, events happen in the same way they would if it were.
After the events of the last book, everyone is basically terrified that the demon lord has possessed Rosemary, and her father is in fact coming up with a plan just in case they’re unable to save her. Kanon, our Japanese import, is of course devastated that all this has happened because Rosemary took the attack meant for her. And Leonhart is upset that he wasn’t able to protect her, upset that he cannot convey his love to her, upset that he’s unworthy of her because he’s too old/too common/whatever. That said, no one is sitting around waiting for things to get worse. The sorcerers are busy trying to design a demon lord-catching trap, and Rosemary, despite being a devastated teenager, really is researching possible ways out of this. That said, the actual power behind the demon lord turns out to be far closer to her than anyone could have guessed…
There’s some interesting isekai physics here, which Kanon and Rosemary discuss. Basically, she’s been summoned but they can send her back fairly easily at the moment… but the longer they wait, the more the “hole” that she went through to go from Japan to this world will deform, and eventually she won’t be able to return. Hell, I’m not even sure whether she will be returning – there’s no way she can miss the wedding next book, right? As for Rosemary and Leonhart, yeah, sorry to spoil the obvious, but they’re not destroyed by the demon lord, and they do eventually manage to confess to each other, after not one but TWO false starts where they do it while the other is sleeping. As for her other potential boyfriends, well, they’re sad, but I think in the end it’s very much a case of “as long as Rosemary is alive, that’s fine”. Which, given the entire premise of this book has been “trying to stop Rosemary getting killed”, thematically fits.
So we’ve almost wrapped everything up, and I for one am quite happy to have a victory lap if that’s what we get… unless, of course, there’s one final assassination attempt that Rosemary has missed. Either way, this has been a good romantic thriller.
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