The Spring 2023 Light Novel Guide

Young Lady Albert is Courting Disaster

What's It About? 

Meet Mary Albert, daughter of a rich and powerful duke. With her neat silver ringlets and impeccable manners, she's the perfect young lady. But Mary harbors an unusual ambition—her own downfall!

On the day of her school entrance ceremony, Mary realizes she's living in an otome game she played in her past life. Not only that, but she's the villainess who's destined to torment the heroine, be cast out of noble society, and end her story in ruin. Most would do anything to avoid such a miserable fate, but not Mary! She cheerfully dives into the wicked role she was born to play, setting a course for catastrophe and dragging along her exasperated servant, Adi. He grudgingly assists in her schemes despite his sardonic misgivings about this whole past life business.

However, not all goes to plan. Despite her best efforts to bully and harass the gentle heroine, Alicia seems blind to Mary's intentions, even coming to see her as a friend. What must our villainess do to achieve her dreams of doom?!

Young Lady Albert Is Courting Disaster has a story by Saki, and art by Haduki Futaba. English translation by Ray Krycka. J-Novel Club, $7.99 digital. Available now.

Is It Worth Reading?

Kim Morrissy

Rating:

With its web novel debut coming only three weeks after My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, Young Lady Albert Is Courting Disaster definitely feels more like a response to that series specifically than what would become the villainess fad at large. Like My Next Life as a Villainess' Catarina, our protagonist Mary spontaneously realizes that she's living in a game world; the twist here is that she actually wants the bad end (which is only exile here, not death), but just isn't prepared to fully commit to being an ass.

This series was mildly popular in Japan in its day, but by the year 2023, it's old hat, with Mary predictably befriending the game's heroine without intending to. Thankfully, this book has a good feel for jokes; Mary's relationship with her servant Adi is delightfully irreverent, and their banter is easily the highlight of the story in general. The romantic tension in their relationship doesn't get quite as much focus as I would like, but the few scenes in which it's relevant have a strong impact. Funnily enough, the actual villainess plot barely registers as the appeal, and the resolution is distinctly anticlimactic.

It's a bit tricky to recommend a book where the appeal is not what's advertised, but if you're just looking for a solid comedy with mild romantic elements, you could definitely do worse than this.

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your reincarnation go? Not quite as planned. When Mary Albert realizes she's living inside a popular otome game from her past life as the villainess, she's determined to be her bad self and reap her doom. She reasons that since she can't get her trademark villainess curls to change—no matter what she tries—the story is set in stone. As someone with curly hair, I can tell you that curls are in no way a good benchmark for determining your fate, but Mary is firm with this idea and will not be dissuaded. (To be fair, the curls are a metaphor and a way to poke fun at genre tropes.) At the very least, it's a bit of a change from other stories in this increasingly crowded isekai subgenre.

It's also worth noting that it may not be enough to carry an entire novel. Mary lives out the entire plot of the game in this volume, so a second book could infuse this with a fresh scent, especially given the many hints that people who aren't Mary pick up on about her faithful servant (more of a friend) Adi's feelings for her. (Author Saki notes in the afterword that the “rom” part of the planned “rom-com” got a bit lost here.) The thrust of this novel is that Mary tries very hard to live down to her role, failing miserably at every turn. It's fun that this isn't because Mary isn't playing her part to perfection – game heroine Alicia is so sweet and trusting that nothing Mary does gets through to her.

If you've played otome games, Alicia does come off as the familiar blank-slate player character, designed to allow gamers to impose their personalities upon her. It's a nice touch, and Mary feels a bit worse than these novels often portray; she's less a stock “villainess” trope and more a rotten side character. (The game Steam Prison has a few characters she reminds me of.) Like other characters in the genre, Mary is on a journey to realize that just because she's living in a game world doesn't mean she's bounded to the actual game. This is probably the second-best aspect of the book, the strongest undoubtedly being Adi and his interactions with Mary. Young Lady Albert Is Courting Disaster is enjoyable and makes an effort to be different from its brethren. But if you're fed up with the genre, it may not do much to convince you otherwise.