Tags: Fantasy, Adventure, Romance, Shoujo/Josei

Claire’s New Happiness in Paffuto!

The third review of the week, this time on the second finished pre-pub series featuring otome games, romance and the dangers of magic words.

As in most stories of this nature, the plot follows Claire after having her engagement abandoned to Prince Asbert. Determined to make a new life in the church, she instead comes across a strange, standout group of people, befriends them and travels with them to the nation of Paffuto. This is where Claire’s new route begins, with her magic fully manifest and her new friends being Paffuto nobles and royalty, she’ll strive to make a new path to happiness on her own.

First, I should mention that this series can come over as rather generic and fully uses almost all the tropes within the genre. However, it is generally well written and most of these tropes that can come over as annoying or paint by numbers come off naturally due to the writers engaging pace.

This is also likely helped by the fact that the interactions between the main characters work well and you get a good sense throughout the novel that the friendship between them is growing. The relationship between Vik, Claire and Lui are particularly strong throughout the first volume and every interaction between them cements their character journey by the end of the volume, either being lovers between Vik and Claire or friends with some of the strongest bonds between Lui and Claire.

There’s also an engaging mystery surrounding the destruction of Claire’s mother’s birth country, Lindel. With families from both the nations of Nostron and Paffuto seemingly involved and some answers given by the end of the volume, I can’t wait to see how they’ll weave the mystery through the next volume.

On the flip side, there are a few small things that irk me about the volume, the first being Charlotte. She’s both annoying and does very little to distinguish herself from other antagonists of the genre. The second involves volume one’s ending. After the mess of the engagement between Vik and Claire that leaves Lui in a coma and relations between the two nations in tatters, Claire decides to restart the route from scratch, which I find odd considering they definitely could’ve found a way to work things out.

To conclude, Fallen Duke’s Daughter is a well-written if slightly generic series that would likely serve well as an introduction for those wanting to get into the genre. For the rest of us, the series offers ample well-choreographed character moments and an engaging mystery that continues its way into the second volume.