The latest installment of The Otaku Bookshelf focuses on two light novels: Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, Novel 1 (Bandai Entertainment), an adaptation of the popular anime series, and Maid Machinegun (Del Rey), an original story about life in a maid cafe. Are either worth adding to your book collection? Read on the for the full scoop.

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, Novel 1

Original Story by Ichirou Ohkouchi and Goro Taniguchi, Written by Mamoru Iwasa
Bandai Entertainment, 162 pp.

Volume one of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion is a prequel to the anime, taking place approximately seven years before the main story. The novel introduces three of the series’ principal characters: Lelouch, the ten-year-old son of Emperor Charles vi Britannia; Nunnally, his blind, wheelchair-bound sister; and Sukazu Kururugi, the son of Japan’s prime minister. To avoid war between the revitalized British Empire–whoops! “Holy Empire of Britannia”–and Japan, Charles dispatches two of his children to live with the Kururugis. It doesn’t take long for Lelouch to realize that his father’s friendly overture is, in fact, a hostile act; Lelouch and Nunnally are nothing more than pawns in their father’s schemes of world domination. Lelouch must then decide where his allegiance lies: with the father who sacrificed his own children to his ambition, or with the Kururugis, whose own motivations for harboring Lelouch and Nunnally remain unclear.

Geass fans will be familiar with the basic story, as author Mamoru Iwasa fashioned the plot from flashbacks and events mentioned in the anime, adding a few new details to Sukazu’s backstory in the process. Not surprisingly, the novel has a cut-and-paste quality. Fans of the series may not mind, as these scenes provide an opportunity for them to “hang” with favorite characters, but casual readers and newcomers may find that Lelouch reads like a succession of discrete events, rather than a story building to its natural climax.

Most of the action unfolds through rapid-fire dialogue, much of it unattributed. The cumulative effect is numbing; by the middle of the second chapter, I found myself hankering for a conversation that actually sounded like two people talking, rather than characters relating key story points to one another. (Actually, there are a few such conversations, but they’re so spectacularly banal they defy description–sort of like overhearing someone’s cellphone conversation on a subway platform.) The descriptive passages are pedestrian, violating the old rule of show, don’t tell with their bald statements about the characters’ appearance (naturally, everyone is attractive), athleticism (naturally, Lelouch and Suzaki wield a shinai with adult skill), and brains (naturally, Suzaki is described as a “genius”).

The folks at Bandai have labored mightily to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, adding several full-color plates, an illustrated character guide, translation notes, and commentary from the author and voice actor Jun Fukuyama, who provided Lelouch’s voice in the anime. The book is more meticulously edited than many light novels I’ve read. Jun Suzukawa, Brian Cutts, and Robert Napton deserve special mention for producing an idiomatic, readable text that’s free of the odd switches in tense and voice characteristic of the genre. Whether a newcomer will find these bells and whistles enticing enough to overcome the book’s shortcomings is hard to say; my guess is that this book will appeal to the die-hard, cosplaying Code Geass fan but not the casual reader.

–Reviewed by Katherine Dacey

Maid Machinegun

By Aaliyah
Del Rey, 208 pp.

Maid Machinegun did nothing to dissuade me from the notion that light novels are trashier than regular books. They seem to occupy the literary level of Star Wars franchise paperbacks. Maid Machinegun is a slap-dash novella, cashing in on the maid café craze. It’s a non-book with only one redeeming value – the glossary is pretty decent. More fun and informative than the text itself, the glossary gives a brief but functional definition of moe, relates some popculture icons, and gives a precise rundown of zettai ryouiki, which the book translates as “the sacred zone.” A more popular translation is “absolute zone” – zettai ryouiki is the area of exposed skin above knee-high socks, with a precise ratio of 4:1:2.5, miniskirt : skin : sock-above-the-knee.

Written under the pen name “Aaliyah,” a character of the same name relays her life working in a maid café in a series of blog posts with the occasional comments from customers. The narrator’s voice is nearly insufferable, with strange asides and digressions that seem to imply Aaliyah learned Japanese from watching television, like the robot in Short Circuit. Aaliyah remains largely uncharacterized until the last few chapters. Supporting characters point out as much to the protagonist, saying she “knows nothing about building a character.” The supporting cast is also uncharacterized to the point of being indistinguishable.

Just when I was about to throw the book against a wall in disgust, another voice broke into the narrative as one of the other maids hijacks Aaliyah’s computer and writes about how Aaliyah began work at the café. Finally a plot hook, only two-thirds of the way through! The final chapters are totally ridiculous with unbelievable high-concept plot twists. If the “book” had been consistently ridiculous at least it would be more palatable, but it’s too little, too late.

If Maid Machinegun was an actual adaptation of a real maid café blog, it might have been more interesting, even if part of it was faked. Halfway through I found myself wondering why Del Rey would bother importing such nonsense. I had a “facepalm” moment realizing I picked this out to review based on the title alone.

The two page manga included in the back was illustrated by Suzuhito Yasuda, of Yozakura Quartet, also available from Del Rey.

–Reviewed by Erin Finnegan