Tags: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Comedy, Romance, Shoujo, Isekai

To tell the truth, I’ve been sitting on this series for a while now. Not really knowing much about the series, I’d skipped over it originally when the first volume came out earlier last year. However, after reading the novel, I can honestly say how wrong I was in dismissing the series as it is just such a wonderful fun treat.

The premise of the series sees Fia, born into a family of knights, attending the knights brigade harbouring a great secret, that she’s the reincarnation of the countries once preeminent saint who had been ruthlessly killed. In order to keep her current knighthood dream alive she must keep this secret to avoid the potential dangers that may arise, whether they be from demons or from the royal family.

A Wannabe Knight Turned Saint

At the beginning of the novel, we see the protagonist, Fia on the verge of her coming-of-age ceremony – an event that sees the aspiring knight collect the magic stone of a monster to be analysed. Complex family dynamics are abound within the beginning section of the novel, with Fia being seen as a rather incompetent knight, each member of her family reacts in different ways towards her efforts. With her elder brother, Ardio, ignoring her completely and Leon dismissing her efforts, she feels a strong bond towards Oria, her sister, as she seems to truly care for her if perhaps at times she comes off as a bit overprotective.

During her coming-of-age ceremony, she comes across an injured black dragon chick and after giving it a healing potion, it attacks her leading to an influx of memories of a past life as the Great Saint. As a consequence, she is given a heap load of new power alongside some traumatic memories that’ll shape the way she thinks and acts as she enters a society filled with aristocrats and royalty. Meanwhile, the black dragon, Zavilia has been fully healed and as a result he decides to swear a bond to her and towards her new found power.

Memory is power. Your magic likely returned with your memories. We Dragons do the same thing.

Zavilia (Page 24)

Memories are an intrinsic connection towards Fia’s powers and as a result of this event she’s able to use a good chunk of the magical power the Saint once had 300 years ago. Her all encompassing healing power is accompanied by a sweet scent in her blood that attracts monsters. The novel doesn’t really go in-depth into this anomaly and it’ll be interesting to see how this will develop later on in the series. This lack of depth can somewhat also be seen when it comes to her other skills. I would’ve liked more of an overview to her broad range of abilities rather than mention them as they become useful within the frame of the novel e.g., imbuing weapons with skills and being able to analyse a monsters’ health and attack.

A Knight Who Must Hide Her Secret

Success in her coming-of-age ceremony sees her safely into entering the general knights exam. Here, she’s able to sort of patch up her relationships with her brother’s by beating both of them respectively in their separate fighting exam sections. Considering that she’s trying to hide her saintly power, she really doesn’t do a great job of it. Throughout the middle section of the novel, she’s constantly doing things that may end up getting her caught, although most of her actions are born out of her good nature and willingness to help people. During the exam and entrance ceremony she uses her power on numerous occasions. With her brothers, she imbues powers to her sword in order to beat them in battle. For Fabian, one of her first friends at the brigade, she heals his broken arm so that he can pass the third exam. With the captain, she uses her analysing abilities to search for his weaknesses to give herself an upper hand in their fight. The latter use of her power raises the suspicions of the upper command, the people she definitely needs to avoid in order to keep her secret.

Forgive me, Sir. As her superior, I accept full responsibility for her stupidity

Cyril (Page 84)

Whilst Fia may be considered lacking in the intelligence department or at best absent minded, her character really shines through and endears itself to both the reader and the other characters in the novel. Her lack of intelligence is outweighed by both her positive attitude and her overall willingness to do the right thing. On more than one occasion she ends up going against the grain either helping out or taking control when necessary, for example befriending supposedly cursed adventurers or by leading the sixth brigade to victory against a powerful Deer-like monster. The latter example would showcase a new ability, being able to measure the health of monsters, an ability that would see her work for the beast tamer division by the end of the novel.

Fia isn’t afraid to speak her mind, one of my personal favourite scenes in the novel comes at the end of the Deer hunt where she ends up drunk alongside the higher-ups of the royal guards. She leaves Cyril, Desmond and Captain Saviz stunned as she freely badmouths them to their faces and freely talks about the problems with the Saints; something that would have a profound effect on Cyril. After the drunken night she ends up waking up on Cyril’s lap, a cause for much awkwardness in Fia and likely laughter from the reader.

A Knight Meets a Saint and Familiars

The final part of the story sees the titular protagonist, Fia, working alongside the beast tamer regiment. Zavilia and Fia are reunited in this part of the story and we see some really nice development in the relationship between the two characters as well as further explore just what it means to have a familiar bond. In order to disguise the black dragon from unwanted attention, Fia comes up with the scheme to dress him up as a blue dove and it is really surprising how nobody noticed this rather obvious disguise.

Fia is undervalued and under-appreciated by the acting captain of the troop, leaving her the grunt work of feeding healing potions to the familiars of the soldiers. Upon feeding the familiars, she strikes up a friendship with a young Saint named Charlotte. Through her we learn of the struggles of Sainthood and the fact that they are taken away from their parents and are unable to see them unless they get results. Perhaps as a way to help her meet her parents, Fia helps Charlotte in channelling her healing magic and on how to create true healing potions – the healing potions created by the current saints are considered to be incorrectly made which is why they cause the patient pain.

The volume ends with yet another character within the royal guards becoming suspicious of both Fia and Zavilia. Quentin, Captain of the Fourth Brigade can visualise peoples power levels as a type of invisible smoke and he sees that Fia’s and Zavilia’s are a lot stronger than they would seem.

Overall, I really enjoyed this series. It’s full of fun with Fia being a really great character to follow around. Hopefully in the upcoming volumes we can learn more bout how both Saints of the past and present actually work and see more of the romantic aspect that the series is supposed to have.