💧 🌕 Week 1 (chapters 1-5) | ティアムーン帝国物語 vol 1

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Welcome to week 1 of ティアムーン帝国物語 vol 1 book club!

Home| Week 1 (here)|Week 2

Week Date Chapters ~Pages Read ~Pages Read (Junior) Audible Timestamp
1 May 4 1–5 27 28 00:00:00 - 00:44:55

Discussion Guidelines

  • Spoilers should always be hidden using spoiler blur.

  • When discussing a specific section, please mention where you are in the book, ideally by chapter, so people reading different versions have a clear point of reference.

  • Feel free to read ahead if it’s exciting, but please refrain from spoiling ahead of the appropriate week.

  • If you have a question about grammar, vocab, cultural things, etc - ask! That’s a welcome part of the discussion too, and other readers will be happy to help.

Will you be joining us?

  • Yes

  • No

  • Maybe

  • I’m planning to read at my own pace

  • I’m just here for the discussion

0 voters
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:droplet: :full_moon: Home Thread for ティアムーン帝国物語 vol 1 - On-going
:droplet: :full_moon: Home Thread for ティアムーン帝国物語 vol 1 - On-going
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YES!!! The time is here!

Okay, everyone probably already knows because of how I publicly announced it, but I already finished reading this week’s chapters. Every one hooked me into wanting to read the next one and I am just eating up Mia’s personality / conundrum of having been basically spoiled to death in her first life and now (for unknown reasons) getting a second chance and being able to use wisdom she’s gained (albeit not much wisdom) in order to start to become a better person. But it’s not that she’s just trying to avoid the same fate by acting different; she’s really honestly gained true appreciation for the people who care for her and she’s expressing it in an honest way and that’s really endearing.

I wonder what kind of developments Mia and Annu’s relationship will go through in the future …

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Finished reading the junior version along the audiobook for this week.
I noticed some words were changed, but very minimal. Also the illustration with the guillotine was removed.

Since I kinda went heavily invested in the series (buying the full series and all the audiobooks), before committing to that I watched the anime to know a bit of what I was getting into.

I’m not sure if I’d be able to fully follow if I hadn’t done that, but I’m hoping to get used to the series to be able to go all the way to the 18th book.

I have to say is refreshing that the living another life, in this case by going back with the memories, is done this way. I’m way too used to the another world and overpowered in X way. In this case there’s no overpowering element, just a will to not make the same mistakes.

Looking forward next week!

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Thoughts on this week’s chapters

So far I honestly feel like ミーア got what she deserved lol. I did feel bad for her during the flashbacks to her suffering in the prison but I can’t say the revolutionaries were wrong. I’m a bit worried the author will try and redeem ミーア by making the revolutionaries secretly evil or something and ignoring all the harm she and her family caused. One thing that really irks me about the fantasy genre in general is how completely uncritical it is towards monarchies (even if it pretends to be) which is why I tend to avoid stories feating royalty. Hoping this just stays a story of ミーア doing better in this life without her treatment in the first life being portrayed as completely unfair.

I also really like アンヌ and think she’ll end up being my favourite character in the book. She’s just so sweet :face_holding_back_tears:

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I think getting the audiobook and reading the furigana version was the right call for me. This series is quite difficult!

My thoughts so so far:

I have high hopes for this series. The main character was a spoiled brat. Though at the age of 12 I can’t really blame her for that, she’s just the result of a bad upbringing. But still she has certainly been humbled by 3 years of imprisonment. She obviously will known what big events will happen in the future as she has lived through them, but she probably won’t know all the details (I doubt she cared at the time, and what emperor listens to their 12 year old on policy anyway?). So I’m curious how she will deal with things like that famine. I like Mia’s interactions with Anne a lot.

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I watched the show a while ago and, well, this sort of thing is something I throw on but end up not having much memory of.

So far the story is fun enough. I found the way the narrator described Mia’s reaction to the smushed cake funny. Like she’s growing as a person because instead of throwing a tantrum she has the capability to ask for another cake and check if Anne is okay!, but oh! wait she starts to melt down when she learns that was the only cake; still progress is progress.

I’m kinda curious about a larger goal/plot going forward. Right now, it seems a bit more episodic (and admittedly we are still super early). Mia stumbles across person she has wronged and now treats them better. Obviously Mia is going to work towards avoiding imprisonment and execution but what’s past that I wonder.

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Being as unspoilery as possible (I’ve read through book 15): the first two books are more in that vein and then as more is uncovered, other story arcs start.

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This ended up being a lot easier than I thought. Unless the language gets more difficult as we progress, I don’t think it should be the same grading as 本好きの下剋上 | L33. Maybe 本好き is underlevelled. :thinking:

Anyways, nice start. I like that the chapters are so short, feels like speeding through it. :distorted_face:

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It flew really nicely for me. One chapter naturally lead into the other and before I noticed I hit that “stop at chapter 6” mark.

Week 1

Mia is funny. I wonder how they will balance her seemingly good actions with her description of barely adequate human being (empathy-wise). I’d like to see her kick someone fr.

After 3 years in underground prison I would’ve expected her spirit to be broken and her personality to humble down. But we’re not going that route either, she goes straight to ordering ppl around haha.

Funnily enough, I was also thinking how Honzuki is harder in comparison. But maybe it’ll get harder when/if the plot thickens.

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Can someone share this image? I’m really curious now.

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Is not too hardcore, but it has the guillotine with the blood stains.

image
image668×1047 192 KB

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Astonishingly, I was able to follow along with the audiobook audio-only fairly well, so I’ll be joining you all for week 2! :partying_face: I couldn’t give a specific estimate of how much I was catching, but the story seems simple enough so far I’m not too worried about having missed much.

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I had tried reading this book before sometime within the last two years and gotten about a third of the way through, but ended up stopping it to try again later.

I haven’t done much formal grammar study at all for a long time, but in the past month, I’ve actually started studying a bit of N1 grammar instead of just なんとなくing it, and I feel like even that little bit is paying off a lot as I’m reading the first few chapters again! Even without that, though, I think my reading speed and comprehension has noticeably improved since my last attempt, which is encouraging to notice.

I did have a question: Is 白月石 a real stone, or a made-up stone? I was thinking “white moonstone”, but I didn’t see 白月石 or 月石 in my dictionary.

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I did some searches and it seems like you are correct, it’s a White moonstone.

Sometimes written (白)月光石 instead of (白)月石 or in Katakana ムーンストーン

https://www.gia.edu/en/moonstone

https://www.gia.edu/jp/moonstone

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Did they replace it with something else in the junior version or are there just no illustrations at all?

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Just finished this week’s chapters.
Not much to say, it’s still early days.
It seems like fun so far.

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Okay, I’m officially joining! I wasn’t completely sure beforehand, but chapter 1 was a pretty good experience so I just continued on and now I’m done with chapter 5 :partying_face:

I watched the anime when it originally aired 2 1/2 years ago, and with my terrible memory I’d only be able to recount very few moments/plot points, so I’m discovering the whole thing anew along with y’all.

I’m doing an audiobook + reading combination because I definitely need more listening experience (and because the audiobook is pretty great so far), but I’m definitely definitely not good enough to go by audiobook only. Hell, even the book itself is vastly out of my league, but with furiganize + digital lookup I’m managing :sweat_smile:

So my current strategy is:

  • Listen to the audio book sentence section by sentence section with WorkAudioBook, repeating them multiple times if I don’t understand. (I can definitely recommend the app; I bought it in a heartbeat once I hit the trial limits. It automatically divides the audio into short sections, and you can press Space to repeat the just-played section, and N to continue to the next section. I’m pressing Space a lot :laughing: )
  • If I don’t get a sentence section after a few tries, I’ll read it while looking up any words I don’t know, and then I listen to it again.
Thoughts while reading

Chapter 2

ふんわりと香ばしい焼きたてパン、季節の野菜がふんだんに入ったシチュー、紅魚のマリネ、それに、フルーツの盛り合わせだった

I’m getting hungry!

Very happy with the conversation before this - I actually was able to just listen to several parts of it without even having to look things up! I know, I know, those parts are very basic, but my vocabulary is limited and this book is vastly over my level, so it makes me glad.

シチューには、しっかりと、ミーアが嫌いな黄月トマトまで入っている。
──この酸味が、ダメなんですのよね。
ミーアはスプーンに乗せた黄月トマトを見つめて。
──でも、これ、なんとなく美味しそうですわね。
ふいに、牢屋の中で食べさせられた物を思い出した。

Haha. Nothing like a few years of terrible food to make you appreciate what you had, hum?

Chapter 3

「お、お待たせしまし、きゃっ！」
メイドが飛んだ！ もちろん、いっしょにケーキも……。
ぽかん、と口を開けるミーアの目の前をゆっくりと横切って行くケーキ、とメイド……。それを止めるものはなにもなく……。
べちゃあ……！
床に激突し、無残にもぺしゃんこになるケーキ。その上にメイドが落ちてきて、完膚なきまでにそれを押しつぶしてしまう大惨事！

Even after travelling back in time, Mia’s life is nothing but filled with tragedy :cry:

けれど辛い牢獄での生活を経験したミーアは、ケーキ皿よりは深く、ティーカップぐらいには広い心を持つようになっていた。

:laughing:

翻訳するならば、つまりは、人並みには遠く及ばないまでも、ギリギリわがまま娘とは呼ばれない程度の忍耐力は持ち合わせるようになっていた、ということだ。

Haha. Glad I didn’t misunderstand that last sentence then. Good thing Mia can’t read the merciless narration :laughing:

これは大きな成長と言えることだった。
そう、人は成長するものなのだ。
それがたとえ亀よりも……、否、カタツムリよりも遅い歩みであったとしても。
ミーアは成長しているのだ！

I love that this sequence is just going on and on. Poor Mia :laughing:

Chapter 4

一応、誤解がないように言っておくと、ミーアは別に暴君というわけではなかった。
そりゃあ、ドジをすれば口汚く罵るし、キレれば手は出る。時には足だって出たし、場合によっては頭突きだってする。
……おおよそ高貴な身分にふさわしくないことだったと反省するミーアである。
けれど、それ以上はない。
ムチで叩いたり、その場にいた兵士に「無礼者を切り捨てなさい！」とはならなかった。だってそれって、痛そうだし……。

Hu. I expected her to be worse after the contempt she’s being shown. Curious to see what that was all about, then.

ミーアは痛いのが、あんまり好きじゃないのだ。

She’d probably get along well with メイプル from 痛いのは嫌なので防御力に極振りしたいと思います。 :laughing:

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And knowledge of the future, which I’m sure will come in handy at points.

What, really? Her crimes so far seem to be “being willful and ignorant” and “throwing tantrums”. Zero malice, and we haven’t even been heard of any misgovernance that she’s personally perpetrated. I don’t think she’d be a good ruler and I’d totally agree that being stripped of her privileges and banished would be appropriate, but to me “languishing in a dungeon for 3 years and then being put to death” doesn’t sound like something she deserved by what we’ve heard so far.

I can only assume that Anne thought something similar, considering what she did.

Yep, that’s what I thought too.

I feel like at least right now it makes sense to not have any concrete near-term plot goals beyond “let’s discover Mia’s current environment and the other characters she’ll interact with”. I’m sure it’ll get more purposeful in the future considering that she has to stop the downfall of her whole country.

Agreed! I don’t think this is harder than サイレント・ウィッチ 沈黙の魔女の隠しごと | L29 so far.

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The illustrations are different at the Junior, and in different places.

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Thanks for mentioning AudioWorkBook in the home thread btw. I’ve tried it after you mentioned it and it’s been very useful! Luckily my deDRM software allows for downloading each chapter separately as mp3 files. :smiley:

Exactly this for me too. In fact, I intend to listen to and read every chapter a couple of times (at the same time) because I think it makes good practice.

I still need to look up words almost every sentence so I need to read digitally. I bought the first 4 volumes of the furigana version anyway and it will arrive somewhere next week. Maybe I read those in my weekly rereads.

I’ll never forget the word 断頭台, I’m sure I’ll need it a lot!

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I’m loving the super short chapters, it makes it so easy to just read one per day without that icky feeling of stopping mid-chapter. :laughing:

I watched the anime recently in preparation, which has really helped with comprehension. :slightly_smiling_face:

I wish book/series pages included a graph of how the level has changed over time - this moved from L32 a couple of weeks ago to L33 now. サイレント・ウィッチ 沈黙の魔女の隠しごと | L29 was L31 a matter of weeks ago, too. Obviously not massive differences, but they both already had quite a lot of ratings, and they’ve gone from 1 level difference to 4. :thinking:

I didn’t know I needed a gem encyclopedia in my life. :gem_stone: :heart_eyes:

WorkAudioBook, for some reason. :melting_face:

I was all ready to tell you that you don’t need to buy a licence, but looks like another great free product has turned into a paid one. I guess I registered before they required you to pay, but tbh it’s so useful that I’d happily give them money. :+1:

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