Tags: Comedy, Romance, Fantasy, Slice of Life, Shoujo

A Mushroom a Day Won’t Keep the Prince Away!

If you like mushrooms, mushroom puns and fantasy romance, maybe Cross Infinite World’s latest title might be for you.

The story sees Agnes face an uncertain future after her engagement to Phillip ends after he’s found to have been cheating on her with his supposed dragonmate. All is not lost however, during the party she meets Claude, second in line to the throne and an all-around hottie who helps sort out the situation. Sprouting mushrooms on him during their encounter leads Agnes further away from the commoner life she strives for and instead draws the affection of Claude looking for her and her mushroom’s hand in marriage.

This novel really feels like a tale of two tones. The first is the overall light-hearted tone of the series, mainly focusing on Agnes’ troubles when dealing with Prince Claude’s courting methods, which due to her condition often sees him covered in different varieties of mushrooms. Not that Claude minds all that much, as the main reason for her original apprehension stems from Claude’s budding mushroom hobby, although most would more likely call it a fetish. Both Agnes and Claude enter a six-month fake relationship contract, which gives him ample time to show his feelings towards her, although for most of the time Agnes puts this down to his love of her mushrooms.

Personally, I enjoyed the author’s use of a whole mushroom wiki to show how she feels around certain characters as well as to show how her relationship with Claude is progressing. In the story, the Cuphophyllus virgineus is the mushroom messenger of their love and as their love progresses throughout the first volume the mushroom heralds other species to spectate their blossoming relationship.

These mushrooms are also useful given her stunted emotions and the second more serious tone of the novel. Whilst most of the novel may seem light-hearted, there are a lot of serious themes and undertones running through the series. Phillip really did a number on her emotionally and does well to shine a light on the controlling and coercive behaviour that he excerpts on her during their relationship. Agnes is often shown to have low self-esteem owing to Phillip’s constant comments on how she wears her hair, her clothes and her background, thus she struggles to believe that even her own family want her around let alone that someone like Claude could love her for anything more than her mushrooms. The volume does a good job of following her journey as she moves away from the control and can finally face Claude’s feelings.

One thing that did drive me around the bend when I noticed it, however, was the constant mistakes in formatting mushroom species names in Latin. As a biology graduate, I can’t let this slide having had it drilled into me for 4 years. Species names in Latin are in italics with an upper case on the first word and a lower case on the second. It’s not really a big thing but I can’t help but get irked by it.

Overall, Mushroom Princess is a good, solid example of a fantasy romance series that does well to balance its light-hearted tone and more serious themes. I highly doubt the series will get a second volume due to the happy ending with proper closure but it was still a fun read nonetheless.