Hasekura Isuna

I’ve decided to provisionally make The Bibliophile’s Journal a regular, probably monthly, feature of the blog. My stated purpose with the blog is to share my thoughts on what I read and watch, but with most books I don’t have enough material to justify a dedicated review, but do have a few things to say. This is especially with individual volumes in ongoing series (e.g., Gunslinger Girl this month). Depending on how it goes, I may also just start posting very short, say one- or two-paragraph posts on everything I read.

Spice & Wolf is a series that I’ve wanted to write about for a long time, but I’ve struggled with actually putting pen to paper for it. It’s like the Haruhi series in that it’s charming and competently written, but lacks the subtlety and complexity that make for a great, re-readable novel series.

Spice & Wolf’s basic premise is that Lawrence, a traveling merchant in a world loosely based on late Medieval or Renaissance Europe, meets Holo, a wolf-spirit and harvest goddess in a village he does business in, and agrees to help her return to her homeland of Yoitsu, far in the north. The overall plot is a promising one, but author Hasekura Isuna has also set up a potentially major story-writing problem, because one of our protagonists is an almost literal deus ex machina.