Menou and Akari arrive in the port city of Libelle in the second volume of Mato Sato’s The Executioner and Her Way of Life light novel series. Menou is still determined to carry out her main objective, but naturally she gets wrapped up in an incident.
Front cover of the second volume of The Executioner and Her Way of Life, featuring Menou
Journey to where the fog never lifts…
Libelle, a city by the sea. Those who venture into its fog are said never to make it back alive – a murderous phenomenon that’s another of the Four Major Human Errors that has ravaged the world. But for Menou, it just may be the solution she’s looking for. To fulfil her role as Executioner, she needs to find a way to murder Akari, the girl who seems to spring back to life whenever she’s killed. Maybe this time, Menou will be successful in carrying out her duty… but a calculated encounter with Manon, the daughter of Count Libelle, shifts all their fates in a direction that even Akari never could have predicted. Just what will become of the Executioner and her seemingly unkillable target…?
One of the first things I want to bring up about this volume – and actually the first, too – is the Wild Frontier. It’s a wilderness between cities that is mentioned several times, yet we are given only the bare minimum of details about Menou and Akari’s journey through it.
Kind of feels like we’re missing out on some rather interesting adventures. Especially when we are told things like Momo and Ashuna happened to meet in some ruins there. I would love to get even more details about those events, but I don’t know where exactly it would all fit in.
This volume is densely packed with events, all unfolding within the city of Libelle. Menou has the opportunity to make another attempt on Akari’s life, and that’s just to begin with. A faction called “The Fourth” becomes quite prominent. In fact, this isn’t Menou’s first run in with them, but she wasn’t aware of it at the time.
That also brings me to the introduction of a new major character: Manon. She’s got quite the backstory, and the chain of events she’s responsible for make what happened in Garm look like child’s play.
In terms of familiar characters, of course Momo is ever present. Pleasingly, so is Ashuna – those two do get a bit more page time than just a mention that they happened to meet in some ruins. Unfortunately, we do get a little less Momo in this volume compared to the first. Guess it is balanced out by giving us a bit more Ashuna, though.
I’ve already mentioned that the events of this volume dwarf what happened in Garm. The scale is definitely beyond anything from the first volume, and we get some delightfully grotesque imagery all throughout – even more so as the story reaches it climax.
This volume of The Executioner and Her Way of Life was a brilliant read from start to finish. Granted, I do crave a little more information about what happened in the Wild Frontier, but everything that happened in Libelle had me absorbed.
Utterly superb writing from Mato Sato here, and I shouldn’t forget to mention nilitsu’s wonderful art. I particularly like the image that features Menou and Akari all dressed up. Well, that and the bath scene.
Rory Muses 