Review Summary
A sweet teen romance featuring a superficially perfect girl and a plain boy. It starts out terribly slow, but does eventually pick up the pace and touch upon a heavy topic. With the implicit promise of expanding upon said topic, the series may potentially explore the impact of a difficult childhood and one way to help someone cope with that.
However, that is for volume 3 to explore, and this volume barely scratches the surface.
Amane’s confusing and frustrating life with the angel continues. Spending New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day with Mahiru only leaves him more unsure about his feelings toward the beautiful girl. Could it be that his clumsy warmth is slowly melting the angel’s cold facade?
Synopsis from the store page on Bookwalker.
The Boring Beginning
I want to illustrate how slow the first third of the book is.
Riding the high from the previous volume, the protagonist and his eventual love interest, Amane and Mahiru respectively, spent New Year’s Eve and New Year’s together.
In fact, they had been spending every day together, hanging out in Amane’s apartment by themselves. Seeing them simply enjoying each other’s company was sweet, though Amane’s conflicted internal monologue over Mahiru may be grating to the more jaded among us.
I assume I’m jaded, anyway. Maybe his monologue is actually grating to most people — I don’t know.
Putting my out-of-touch-ness aside…
They then visited a shrine together, as per the Japanese New Year custom. While this visit was made at the behest of Amane’s accompanying parents, the two ended up alone and made a small romantic advance.
These small, sweet romantic moments were sprinkled with bits of character development — most notably, a proper introduction of Amane’s father and the character dynamics of all four characters put together.
However, despite everything that happened, it felt like nothing happened. Their interactions were fine, but not fun enough to be the focus. There was no meaningful tension between the two main characters, only the mutual embarrassment of Amane and Mahiru as they self-consciously participated in couple-like events.
Ultimately, the first third of the volume felt aimless because it kept crawling along without a narrative hook.
The next event was another staple of Japanese teen romance — the girl fell sick and the boy had to nurse her back to health.
After that, Valentine’s Day.
Finally, White Day — an event where the men returned gifts to the women who gave a gift on Valentine’s Day.
Across all these events — all these chapters of plentiful words — no narrative hook was introduced. The one teensy glint of a hook quickly turned out to be a dud.
It was frankly difficult to keep reading when the two main characters simply inched closer together with neither conflict nor tension. I could not shake the feeling that the author was just checking off a list of the major ‘romantic events’ until she could reach the correct part of the timeline.
Perhaps the pacing was a consequence of adapting a web novel into a light novel, but it nevertheless felt pointless to read through.
Pleasant Prose
My compliments to the author, Saekisan, and the translator, Nicole Wilder.
Although the narrative meandered for far too long, the sentences and paragraphs themselves were often varied and sometimes creative. Colourful words were used where appropriate. Sentence and paragraph length was kept at a comfortable medium, with short and long ones used judiciously to match the pace of each scene.
A Smidgen of Something Special
After one more romantic event, the narrative hook that was introduced in the first volume, but barely mentioned in this one, finally became relevant.
Mahiru’s difficult childhood came to the forefront and it was given the proper gravitas. Despite Amane’s fervent desire to help his not-girlfriend, he had recognised that the issue was a deep-rooted, delicate, and complex one that could not be solved quickly. Although I personally dislike his stubbornness in this part, he also showed patience with Mahiru. He was patient with her and reassured her. He simply kept her company — and that was enough.
They stayed together, and they are set to work together to deal with whatever issue comes in the following volumes.
Overall
This light novel is a passable romance with an arduously slow start. While it does set up a promising premise for future volumes, you may prefer to skip this volume and read a summary instead.
A Space Carved from the Unrelenting World 