Better than “with a little bit of divination / fortune telling thrown in” as in うらら迷路帖, which in that case means “with a little bit a classical Japanese thrown in”. 
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lol, my tastes are so skewed that my recommendations for beginners are…not the best. I favor yakuza stories, royalty stories, and the isekais that keep putting people in settings that are clearly modeled after Victorian-period England; so the speaking styles are all non-standard. 
This is why I need to make a list so that I can say “this one won’t make you feel stupid because it’s not going to be using Kansai-ben to talk about cutting off someone’s pinky and sinking them into the ocean.”
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Sounds like I can’t help you if you wouldn’t recommend かがみの孤城 to beginners. The only books I’ve read that Natively classifies as easier than かがみの孤城 are 霧のむこうのふしぎな町 | L25 and https://learnnatively.com/book/dc838454ca/, both of which I think were pretty bad.
By the way, can I ask why you wouldn’t recommend かがみの孤城 to beginners? If it’s just because of the kanji usage, they recently released a full furigana version. Or did you find it not beginner friendly for another reason?
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I overall probably rate based on how long it takes me to read pages.
Larger text more spacing generally will make it easier to read. If something reads very dense and I have to double check a lot of word meanings or kanji readings then I would rate something harder. Everything I have been reading lately has fairly straightforward writing, so I am not really considering that whole part of Japanese.
Honestly I agree with most of the difficulties scores that have been assigned here already.
Sometimes with these fantasy Isekai books they have kanji compounds that I know the meaning based on the kanji, but I am not really sure about the correct reading. But I guess it’s not so important to actually know the correct or accepted reading so I don’t really worry about those.
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I appreciate that sentiment, but thinking on this I don’t think I’d really be a great person to ask about anything for beginners. It’s been a few years since I was one, and I didn’t actually read much beginner material, I just threw myself into adult literature and struggled through from pure determination 
I will note that was after I’d gotten comfortable with N3 grammar and was thinking “so…what next?”. I gather most beginners start reading before that point, which is wiser.
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I love those! If we are still talking about “beginner” recommendations (i.e. the easiest possible) I would go with
- 乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない悪役令嬢に転生してしまった... (series) | L26
- 伯爵と妖精 あいつは優雅な大悪党 | L30
- 悪役令嬢レベル99 ~私は裏ボスですが魔王ではありません~ カドカワBOOKS | L30 but only volume 1, which is a complete story; due to popularity, the author got pushed by the publisher to “continue” it as a series, but it’s much less fun after that. Well, I still read it, though. Also, yikes, I’m already up to level 30, not exactly beginner friendly at all at this point.
- 虫かぶり姫 アイリスNEO | L32 (I only read volume 1, but I liked it)
- 本好きの下剋上~司書になるためには手段を選んでいられません~第一部「兵士の娘1」 | L30 (At this point, we have departed any semblance of being a recommendation for beginner, but that’s my favorite light novel series ever)
- 悪食令嬢と狂血公爵 ~その魔物、私が美味しくいただきます!~ | L32 (I love this one too, sadly only 2 volumes published so far)
- 図書館の魔女 第一巻 | L37 (lalala I can’t see that difficulty tag
)
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I think the way I grade things is generally the same way as other people above have stated. Generally its by how complicated the sentences are, how common/obscure the vocabulary is, typical sentence length, does it use a lot of idioms/expressions that are uncommon, etc.
As far as beginner recommendations go, I’d agree with ふらいんぐうぃっち above and also mention はなにあらし はなにあらし 1 | L17. The latter uses a bit more casual speech styles I think, but it is just a romance/slice of life story, so no witch/magic vocabulary at least. This genre does not appear to be what you’re looking for though, so can’t help anymore there.
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Oh, that’s cool that they released a full furigana version. I’ll bookmark it!
I normally wouldn’t recommend it because of certain grammar structures and vocab. (and some people avoid a novel of that length like the plague). Though, it is true that it depends on the person. If they’re looking to challenge themselves right off the bat, then I would recommend it as something I’m currently enjoying. But I try to recommend things that someone may be able to finish in a shorter amount of time to give that boost of confidence for them to move onto the next book. (rather than them thinking "i’ve been reading the same book for the last 3 months.) I seriously can’t see myself recommending it to someone at the N5 level as their first thing to read.
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Ah, didn’t even think about the length. Definitely wouldn’t recommend a 550 page novel as someone’s first book.
Personally I would not recommend any book to someone at N5 level. From personal experience, getting a good way into N4 would be a good idea before jumping into a book.
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Omg I was about to read this in English! Is this the push for me to read it in Japanese first and then English? 
The artwork for 悪食令嬢と狂血公爵 ~その魔物、私が美味しくいただきます!~ | L32 looks amazing, but what’s it about?
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Not gonna lie–so did I. Before, I didn’t have much access to Japanese materials in my area or to the Internet. After I got to a high enough level of understanding to be able to navigate websites and read through reviews and whatnot, I was able to start reading. My goal is to be a translator, so I’m trying to read all sorts of things, but I seriously hate reading the news lol. I do not want to translate the news if I don’t have to.
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It’s a romance story between a 令嬢 who likes to eat magical beast meat (which goes against the precepts of the major local religion and gave her the nickname of 悪食) and the count who’s in charge of the extermination of said magical beasts, preventing them from overflowing into the kingdom. Both characters are feared by the general noble population and are having a hard time finding a fiancé(e), until they meet.
Then, the story follows them as they get to know each other. I don’t want to spoil too much, especially since, with only two volumes published, spoiling anything would spoil a huge chunk of the available story
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lol, im not gonna lie–i like spoilers so much that I will pull up the plotline of a movie in the middle of watching it. 
I hate surprises, so I never mind spoilers. I just can’t figure out how to actually hide/blur spoilers on here without using the summary option.
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Ugh, sorry no I haven’t gotten around to adding spoilers. Spoilers don’t seem to be a part of the normal discourse functionality, so I have to figure out how WK added them. On the list!
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(Edit: Sorry, I thought those links would actually include the instructions to install / GitHub information.)
(Edit 2: The plugins seem to be on their GitHub page: Discourse · GitHub)
Spoiler plugin:
Solved plugin is another one to consider if you think it’ll be useful (just depends on your intention for the forum I think):
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I don’t really think about my gradings. I just remember how difficult I felt a book was. Meaning, grading is mostly an intuitive not an analytical activity for me.
I do consider furigana, but only when two manga are otherwise at similar difficulty. Furigana might give a feeling of safety or comfort. But it’s not actually very useful to me because I don’t study vocabulary without their usual kanji spelling (at least since I finished with my beginner textbooks). While I might occasionally confuse or forget a reading, generally not knowing the reading implies not knowing the meaning for me.
Other points that make me grade a work (mostly manga) as easier:
- Beinga slice of life story, comedy or simple romance
- School or home setting, high school characters or younger, no sci fi or fantasy
- Lack of introspection or internal monologue
- Few characters (the people, not the Unicode points. Probably more important for novels than manga). Single point of view.
- Lack of slang, dialect, kana only speach or technical vocabulary
- In manga, less text and more storytelling through pictures, facial expressions etc
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I actually stopped かがみの孤城 about 6 months back because I was finding it hard – judging by pages/characters an hour. Around that time I narrowly failed N2 mostly due to the time limit (barely answered any of the reading questions).
I read a few pages yesterday and now it’s rather easy, which bodes well for the next test!
It’s probably somewhere around the same level as most “easy” LN. It’s really not much harder than say くまクマ熊ベアー, but the length is off-putting when you can only read a few pages/characters a day.
On grading:
I used grade based on how difficult a book was in comparison to どんどん読める and SouMatome/SKM reading text books.
I found pretty much every children’s book I read was harder than どんどん読める. The only thing easier would’ve been こぐまのクーク物語 春と夏. So I was surprised to see books with levels below or equal to どんどん読める (24).
These days it’s just reading pace after the first quarter of the book, but taking experience in the genre into account.
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- contents: e.g. slice of life is (imo) the easiest as it deals with real world happenings, not a lot of philosophical musings, etc.; the more fantasy/abstract the more difficult; lots of dialogue = easier vs. lots of introspection/musings/descriptions
- furigana: I find lots of kanji but furigana easier than lots of kana; (I hate when books don’t even have furigana for names
) - sentence structure: long vs. short
- formal/archaic vs. modern language
- my general, subjective feeling of struggle
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I DESPISE that, especially when the name is important for future jokes or something…At least tell us the reading 
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