Tags: Adventure, Fantasy, Harem, Slice of Life, Isekai

Noble Family Struggles and the Challenge of Creating a Mithril Sword!

The slow-life blacksmithing series returns with a bang as Ezio and the members of his forge become embroiled in a political plot of succession between members of nobility!

Starting off the second volume, we see the members of the Ezio forge caught in the middle of a political struggle. Contrary to most of the first volume, the first half of this novel picks up the pace of the plot forgoing the easy slow-paced lifestyle to bring us a more fantasy adventure-like tale. Marius, a guard in town and nobleman, has been caught up in a battle of succession to become head of the family sidelining his older brother. As a result, the brother has resorted to underhanded tricks and fatal ploys to oust Marius from ever becoming head of the household. This brings the problem squarely at Eizo’s door as Marius asks him to help create a new family sword and offer a place of protection to Diana, Marius’ cousin who has been caught up in the sorry affair. There’s certainly more pressure and tension in this volume compared to its predecessor. This volume really puts Eizo’s blacksmithing cheats to the test as his designs need to be of the highest quality to help Marius out of his sticky situation.

The first part of the novel also sees the introduction of the latest member to join the forge, Diana. After the succession events end at the expense of the older brother’s life, Diana officially becomes a permanent member of Eizo’s family after enjoying her time there and taking a liking to Eizo. She’s a welcome addition to the series and quickly becomes friends with each member of the forge usually partnering up with Samya to go on hunting expeditions or allowing Ezio to improve his fighting ability by having daily sparring sessions. However, like many of the other main characters within the series, her character remains rather undeveloped.

Characterisation has been a theme that is constantly at the back of my mind when it comes to this series. Giving it a pass for most of the first volume, it’s here, in the second volume where the cracks are starting to show. Almost every character other than Ezio is lacking in development and this likely stems from the author’s unwillingness to change from Ezio’s perspective. I would love to see how other characters are feeling during certain tense situations e.g., Diana’s first night in Forge Ezio, or how these characters feel about each other. A great way to show this would be to add a point of view change to some of their weekly hunting expeditions, which would have a greater focus on the conversations between Diana and Samya. The heart to hearts they could have would be a boon to the series to see how both characters navigate their love for the same man. This would certainly be a better way to develop the series rather than have large portions of the book focused solely on blacksmithing sections of work that he’s done before.

Talking about blacksmithing sections, the second half of the volume heavily focuses on this aspect by following a plot for the commission of a mithril sword. This slowdown in pace can feel rather disappointing given the promising fantasy adventure aspect that we’d been given in the first half. At least with the addition of Lidy, the elf, in these chapters, we get a more in detail look at this world’s elf culture. Whilst there isn’t anything radically different from the depiction of elves in other isekai and fantasy series, I do like the fact that unlike humans they have to recharge their mana supply through the trees in the forest.

My Quiet Blacksmith Life volume 2 is a tale of two halves. The first sees a more promising development for the series as it focuses on a more high tension adventure plot of political intrigue, whilst the second falls back on the status quo of the daily life of creating swords. Whilst this isn’t necessarily bad per se, I do suggest that the author changes this up by giving more significant character development to the other main character by interjecting scenes of daily life from their perspective.

I hope you enjoyed my review and would love to see what you thought of the volume in the comments!

You can read the second volume of My Quiet Blacksmith Life through prepub on the J-Novel Club website. The digital edition of the volume will be released on May 4th.