This is a very informal thread for reading 本好きの下剋上 arc 2, 神殿の巫女見習い. Since even book titles tend to be spoilery, I’m leaving out covers and titles for the next books, but this thread will cover the next 4 books in the series.
For anyone who is still reading arc 1, we had a formal Natively book club for the first book, and eefara and I polluted used the home thread for our thoughts on books 2-3.
While this is an informal reading thread, please follow the spoiler policies in other book clubs and use either spoiler tags or the drop down menu for anything that occurs after the first arc.
The timing is good here, I’ve just gotten back into reading this series and started on part 2 last week. I’m reading the junior (furigana) versions again, I have them as both physical novels and digital novels on bookwalker.
I’ve watched the anime which did cover this arc across season 2 and 3, so I do remember the broad strokes of the plot, but it would be nice to finish all of this part before April as the season 4 anime (which starts covering arc 3) is airing in q2 2026. So that’s 8 months to finish 7 furigana’d novels. It’s a bit of a push at my reading speed as I don’t want to just read Bookworm, but we’ll see how it goes.
We’ve been at a roughly one book (not junior) a month pace, with a break between books. Having never watched more than a few eps of the first season I’m not super motivated to get there before the anime starts, but it would be a kinda cool thing to manage.
As usual I’ll be listening along to the text as I read for volume 4, and taking a quick look at the audiobook table of contents, I’ll probably be sticking to my usual pace of two chapters a day since that amount fits into my daily listening pretty well.
Vol. 4, プロローグ & 誓いの儀式と側仕え
We’re starting off strong with the 神官長’s perspective. His name is Ferdinand and he’s apparently only 20? That’s quite a bit younger than I was anticipating; I figured he would be like early 30s. (Based on nothing but vibes, I suppose.) I’m a little surprised マイン’s apparently getting three attendants as well; that feels surprisingly large. The 神殿長 might be outing himself here as a moustache-twirling villain; we’ll have to see. It would be pretty interesting if he was actually becoming a senile old man and not pretending to “forget” things for his own convenience; seems a bit too early to tell which way he’ll swing this early on.
マイン’s new 側仕え look like they’re going to be a handful, speaking of. ギル gives me punk ルッツ 2.0 vibes so far, and デリア evil…uh, what was her name? The ギルド長’s granddaughter, vibes. This is looking like it’s going to be a crash course for マイン in higher society manners; I’m expecting a lot of cringe from her until she gets the hang of it, haha.
I think the anime glossed over this detail, anime Ferdinand comes across as even more middle aged.
However, mid-20s also passes for middle aged in anime lol
Well they have said a few times at the end of the last volume that there’s a shortage of blue robe priests, and Ferdinand also mentions it in the prologue here.
Wow, I really enjoyed these two chapters! マイン’s clearly out of her depth, but her attendants are doing nothing to help matters, haha. Her straight up threatening ギル with her magic was pretty great, and ベンノ’s various freakouts at マイン’s faux pas was a nice welcome return to their usual relationship.
Honestly I’m really impressed that マイン’s grown enough as a person at this point to realize that, despite there being tasty books right in front of her, she probably needs to pay attention to and figure out this new environment. Time will tell how well that’ll go down, but her embracing that realization was a good step.
I am curious if the 神官長 would’ve reacted any particular way if マイン had finished filling up the shield with magic. Seems like she could’ve kept going and only stopped because she was afraid of overfilling it.
Just read one chapter today since it was a longer one.
Vol. 4, 本題
Yet another good chapter. Have we finally turned a page in the 本好き saga?? Only time will tell.
The thought of Benno being so close to Myne because there are plans for her to marry him or something was…at first confusing, then upsetting. Myne’s what, six or seven by this point? Benno maybe late twenties, given the Japanese propensity of skewing lower on the middle age scale? I suppose a twenty year age gap isn’t too much to surmount for desperate noble families needing to marry off their daughters, but still. Let’s just not bring that up again, okay?
And on a related note, Myne getting embarrassed about Benno passing notes to her and laying her on his lap while she slowly dies of food deprivation managed to squarely hit one of my pet peeves of the “reincarnated as a baby/toddler in another world” set of tropes: small reincarnated child getting flustered when older caretaker does something obviously non-romantic, yet frets over how potentially romantic it is anyway. I suppose I should be happy this didn’t pop up earlier with her family or something…
On a happier note, it looks like we’re making inroads with フラン, at least. He seems like a good guy, and hopefully he’ll join the ranks of people telling マイン what an idiot she is. I got a good laugh out of マイン realizing it was マルク jotting down all of ベンノ’s notes he was passing to her; he didn’t even need to ask ベンノ what to write, it was all “shut up and be quiet” and “moron”.
Looking at the upcoming audiobook chapters, they’re pretty much all a little over 20 minutes apiece, so it’s possible I start reading between two or three chapters a day going forward depending on how I’m feeling.
Yeah I only read 巫女のお仕事 yesterday since it was so long. I’ll definitely read the next one, but then the one after is another long one so I’m not sure I have more than an hour in me today we’ll see.
I’ll let you know if I rally. I might, but I might also try to do more on the other audiobook + text book that I’m working on instead (I’ve really been dragging my feet on that one )
I read 青い衣と異なる常識 today! Not so much to comment on, other than I can finally get to practice some of that 謙譲語 and 尊敬語 that I’d come across in study material before lol.
Honestly, when she collapsed right after signing the contract I thought there was going to be something about the blood magic that she somehow inadvertently broke and we were going to see that in action.
Nope. Our girl just just used magic and then didn’t eat to read books
I mean, she’s nothing if not consistent
I do like that while she brings a lot to this world, but doesn’t immediately know every single thing about it and everyone is running around like she’s a god. I don’t think I even really enjoyed power fantasies when I was a kid, so that makes most isekais a non starter for me.
I do have a terrible feeling that that’s going to come up later. I think there’s an age at which they can be together… actually…
Ok with some literal back of the envelope calculations, if he’s 30 and she’s 7, it’d be half your age + 7 acceptable for them to get together when he’s 68 and she’s 41, but it would still ick me out because he knew her as a child. Maybe if they didn’t see each other for 20 years it’d be ok. But no thanks.
Which actually kinda reminds me… we don’t know how old フリーダ’s fiance is…
Assuming you meant that no one’s treating Myne like a god, I fully agree! It’s refreshing to not have her just curb stomp everyone with no effort or real retaliation.
Oh no, don’t jinx it.
I wonder if フリーダ and the new girl would get along well or not…
The old man of the group is always like 35…
)
I suppose I should be happy this didn’t pop up earlier with her family or something…
