Death’s Daughter and the Ebony Blade Vol. 1 Review

Tags: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Comedy

Synopsis:

Olivia is just a baby when the mysterious Z finds her at a temple in the depths of the Forest of No Return. From that day on, the temple becomes her home and Z her family. Z, a god of death, educates her in the ways of the world, in combat, and in the long-forgotten arts of magic—right up until the day Z disappears. Olivia leaves the forest for the first time in search of Z with its ebony blade in hand. Out in the wider world, all is not well. A bitter war rages between the Asvelt Empire and the Kingdom of Fernest, and Fernest is losing badly. When Olivia shows up on Fernest’s doorstep with a sack of imperial heads looking to volunteer, the royal army happily welcomes her into its ranks. Thanks to Z’s training, she quickly proves herself as a ferocious warrior. In fact, she might be just what Fernest needs to turn the tide of the war…but will they accept her lack of people skills and disregard for discipline? And will she ever see Z again? (Source: J-Novel Club)

Olivia’s Story of Violence and Cake!

Back again with the second review of the week, this time sees the first of the two recently finished J-Novel Club pre-pub series, Death’s Daughter, which comes with heapings of war, violence and moe?!

Death’s Daughter follows Olivia, abandoned at birth only to be raised by one of the Gods of Death known as Z. These days with Z don’t last, however, as one day he leaves only giving her a jet black sword symbolising the start of Olivia’s adventure. To meet Z once again, she goes to a place filled with death, the nearest war, joining the Kingdom of Fernest’s army and quickly becoming the nation’s hero as she slices up members of the empire with ease.

Olivia really is the star of this novel, with her lack of knowledge of the wider world given her strange upbringing, moe charm and ruthless battle instincts she’ll never fail to give the reader a good reaction. As soon as she arrives in Fernest and kills Captain Samuel she makes a strong impression, usually causing problems to both superiors in Paul and Otto and compatriots in Claudia and Ashton alike. Although they can usually calm her down by bribing her with cake or good capital-style bread!

The other characters in the series so far are fun, however, they do seem to lack depth, something which I hope they remedy as we move forward with characters like Ashton playing a larger role in battle tactics.

Speaking of battle, overall, it’s one of the other best aspects of the series. Whether it be the small-scale battles such as with the unicorn or longer high-stakes warfare in the battle for Fort Caspar, it feels well paced. Battle strategy and tactics always feel interesting and are well described for good visualisation of how the battle is taking place minute by minute. These are then interspersed with Olivia and Ashton’s capture of Fort Caspar, which are usually a fun reprieve from the more serious stuff.

In Conclusion, Death’s Daughter is an interesting series that’ll likely please both those looking for cute, moe stuff as well as those looking for battles, blood, guts and gore. My only negative is that the series could stand to take a few moments to deepen its main characters and their motives.

Death’s Daughter and the Ebony Blade Vol. 1

My Rating: 8.5/10

I hope you enjoyed my review and would love to see what you thought of the volume in the comments! The next light novel review will be Fallen Daughter of the Duke.

You can read the first volume of Death’s Daughter in pre-pub from the J-Novel Club website.