For what it’s worth, the primary objective of the series so far is Kate trying to overthrow the Shadow House. Additionally, most of the kids (both Shadow and Living Doll) are brainwashed, so it’s not as simple as you’d like.
I highly doubt the series will end with the mass killing of all the nobles, but if what you want is rebellion it’s definitely going in that direction.
Thanks for that giggle… 
I finished https://learnnatively.com/book/13f4cb524e/ a while back. Not a fan, but I am a very small minority, it seems.
Then I started https://learnnatively.com/book/becc04945e/ which is so much better than the first book. While in the first the message basically was “Women, you can only be happy if you are perfect little self-sacrificing and submissive Yamato Nadeshikos.”, the message in the second seems to be “Men, you are humans and you don’t have to be perfect.” 
The second story almost made me cry. 
and I also finally know what the deal with the lady in the white dress is. 
探偵チームKZ事件ノート お姫さまドレスは知っている | L27 is as ridiculous as they all are… but that’s what is to be expected. 
Glad you enjoyed it! I’ve got the second one on my own 積読 pile, I’ll probably get to it around the end of this month.
I’ve been continuing both 夜は短し歩けよ乙女 | L42 and ビブリア古書堂の事件手帖 (4) ~栞子さんと二つの顔~ | L30 this week. I’m really enjoying the magical realism in 夜は短し, and the constant changes in tone between the two narrators is fun. The lack of grounding to the story isn’t an issue for me, it’s just part of the fun. The ビブリア book is interesting in that it’s not separate mysteries in each chapter like the rest of the series, the whole book is one mystery with lots of characters and turns. And that intrigue I mentioned from the start of the book just popped back up, so things should get even more interesting from here!
After reading the free preview (first ~10%), I decided to just go for it and bought the rest of the currently published volumes (2-4). I’m a bit more than 1/3 through volume 2.
Oh wow, I’ll be playing catch up in no time then! For what it’s worth, I believe the series goes volume 1, 2, 3, 4, then ‘4 -after-’ before the upcoming volume 5. Also I thought I heard somewhere that volumes 1-4 adapted the original syosetu.com story, so maybe the others are adding on after that? Not 100% certain though.
The あとがき of volume 1 mentioned that there were 16 chapters originally and that volume 1 covers 1-3. I expected 5 or 6 volumes for that reason, but 4 is still in the ballpark.
I read another good chunk of this today, and the characters just came across a puzzle that’s apparently a reference to one from 江戸川乱歩’s debut short story, 二銭銅貨 | L37. They’re about to spoil how it works, so I feel like I need to read the original before I go any further… On the plus side I’ll be able to give another Aozora short story some gradings & a review here 
I’m really glad more people are reading + reviewing them. As a free resource they’re so useful, but given a lot have challenging language I think they might feel intimidating to just dive into.
Also 江戸川乱歩 is 推し. Love him. Now I’m tempted to read it too…
edit: couldn’t resist. Listening with this 朗読 and already learned a new word! 支那鞄 which looks like this:
I have in my flashcard notes that 支那人・シナ人 (well, particularly シナ) is possibly a slur these days. I wonder if this is still a common term 
I did the same! Just finished it (had to stop early yesterday), and it was a fun story. The cipher was really cool, and the ending was fun. The structure felt similar to 人間椅子 somehow, with the long buildup, main events, and slight twist ending. Always interesting to see similarities between works of an author, but I should definitely read some more of his stuff too
I just finished ロジカとラッカセイ 1巻 | L21 in 4 days, which makes it the fastest manga that I read in Japanese by far. There weren’t even any cliffhangers, but I just couldn’t stop reading!
And I’ve written my weirdest review yet, since almost anything worth saying feels like it would be a spoiler 
I hope it’ll still get a few people to read it (as unspoiled as possible), since it was fantastic. Easily the best thing I read in Japanese so far, and definitely one of my favourite mangas in any language.
It was also the first manga I ever read without furigana! I learnt two things:
And tomorrow I’ll start with the second volume. Really looking forward to it 
I am reading this series – はたらく細胞 BLACK (series) | L28, now on Vol.6.
Generally like it so far. There are things about Kanji and vocabularies, but that’s pretty much it.
The story is about diseased body and treatment. There is also blood transfusion, to make it even more interesting. But in the end, cells can’t do much. No heroic story, nor solution, or something similar. Nothing similar to a real human.
Vasectomy got the fluid blocked somehow.
I’m lazily going through it one section at a time. Just finished 中 so presumably I’ll finish it tomorrow.
BTW I saw you linked the 朗読 in your review. Not sure if you submitted it to Brandon or not, so just did that now. I submit 朗読 for every Aozora story I read that has one and Brandon set it up so it looks like this:
(that’s from 少年探偵団 | L30 )
Oh cool! I didn’t think of adding it as an official link on the page, but that’s a good idea.
In other Biblia news, another Ranpo short story 押絵と旅する男 came up and I took another detour to read it. It’s a creepy, Twilight Zone-ish story rather than a mystery, and (imo) a bit more challenging than the last one, but also thoroughly entertaining. I submitted a request to add that one to Natively as well!
I’m going to have to refrain for now because I have to read ahead for the next two weeks of book clubs (here + WK) since I’ll be out of town and won’t have access to at least some of them. But I’m putting that on my 読みたい list!
Having finished volume 4, I can now solve that mystery!
So, no, the original plot is not over. Volume 4 goes all the way to the end of part 9 (out of 16), so we are just a bit over half way. There’s a time gap between part 9 (the end of volume 4) and part 10 (the beginning of volume 5) and the editors told the author that it was fine to write some original stuff (so, not from the web version) covering that time period. That original content was published as “4 - after-”. However, it’s just a collection of short stories that are not relevant to the main plot. Booklive doesn’t even consider “4 -after-” to be part of the main series, but as a standalone. Based on my experience with 本好き, the content of those short stories will have no relevance to the plot and won’t be ever mentioned again, except in other short stories… So I’m not planning to read it, so far (except if someone convinces me that it’s really worth the money and time).
As for the main story so far, it was consistently good enough (7~8/10 → 4*). Not necessarily
the best thing I have ever read, but pleasant anyway (for a light novel).
Oh cool, thanks for letting us know! And I’m very glad to hear it’s consistently good so far, since I only read the first one haha. I just finished the Biblia book I was reading, so I think I’ll start volume 2 of this today!
Also, your reading speed amazes me! 
It seems like you got through each volume in about two days. If you can guess, how long did you spend reading these each day?
* for a light novel. The writing still includes masterpieces such as
「えぇと、その、助けていただいて、とても助かりました……」
I don’t mind, personally, but I know people who do (which is why they just avoid light novels like the plague).
Anyway, I thought the quality/interest of the plot remains generally the same across volumes, so if you liked volume 1, you should like the rest.
For that period, I read about 5~6h a day: 1h in the morning, if I’m in a good part 1h during lunch break (i.e., my entire lunch break, just having some calorie mates instead), then 4h in the evening (8pm to midnight). I guess that means I spent 10~12h on each book.
Heh. I’m sure this is a really lame, overdone joke, but maybe because I’m new to the language, it still got a laugh out of me. Or maybe that just means I’m in the intended audience for LNs?
Based on the pace you described, it seems like our reading speeds are somewhat similar. It took me an hour to read the first 30 pages of Volume 2, which felt like a decently fast pace for me. Extrapolating that to all 352 pages is right around 12 hours, give or take (some pages are just illustrations or headers, sometimes I get distracted by a word and and read Wikipedia articles about it for 10 minutes, etc). My downfall is clearly that instead of reading in my free time, I’ve just spent the last week playing TUNIC 
Yes, that sounds very similar.
I’m in a similar situation. I will only finish a book quickly if it happens to be more interesting than literally anything else I could be doing instead 
Ah, technically, a book that is rage-inducing (for me) the right way will also push me to hate-read it really quickly.
I’ve just finished one Akutagawa prize winner and I’m starting another… Completely by chance as I picked them both up in Book Off, but an interesting link!
The book I finished was 乙女の密告 | L29 (learnnatively.com) . Apparently this received some controversy over using an otome style to deal with the topic of Anne Frank. Personally I enjoyed it and didn’t find it flippant - it also has a very clear written style so I would recommend it to anyone who wants a relatively straightforward read which is simultaneously quite thoughtful.
I am starting 父と私の桜尾通り商店街 | L30?? (learnnatively.com) - I didn’t realise this author also wrote ‘The Woman in The Purple Skirt’ which I have seen around but not read. It is a collection of short stories and again has a pretty accesible writing style so far. After a few challenging reads towards the end of last year I’m enjoying this 
