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Review of “I Refuse to Be Your Enemy! Volume 1” by Kanata Satsuki

EisahJan 1, 2023, 7:10:30 PM

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When Kiara receives a summons from her adoptive father to get married, she suddenly realizes the dreams she’s had growing up are actually memories of her past life where she was an average Japanese girl and where she’s living now was an RPG-game in her previous life. But she’s been reincarnated as one of the boss characters.

She decides to escape her marriage and stows away on the carriage of the prince. From there, the prince, Reggie, convinces the family of his cousin to keep her on as a servant in order to protect her. Kiara doesn’t remember who Reggie is at first from the game, but once she realizes his actual status it occurs to her – he dies in the opening cutscene of the game, and is the reason the protagonist, Alan, goes through the game.

Kiara quite likes Reggie, though, and doesn’t want him to die. So she sets out on a mission to discover a way to become a spellcaster like she was in the game, in order to be able to protect everyone. However, becoming a spellcaster or overusing magic is very dangerous, and since she has changed what her character did in the game other events are beginning to stray from the original storyline. Can she save Reggie and the others?

The setup itself is very typical for this genre, and honestly, her past life plays so little into the story it could easily be changed out for all kinds of other things. She never feels like someone ‘from another world’. It could have been a vision or anything else and she could have always been someone from this world. All it does is give her some information she wouldn’t have otherwise. We learn pretty much nothing about her past life, who she was, what she did, or anything like that.

This book has fairly decent worldbuilding. It’s also nice that the various characters generally get to play their own parts either figuring things out or coming up with plans outside of Kiara. It’s not only Kiara acting. When Kiara tells Reggie about her dreams, he believes her, and works to change the future. Alan disbelieves her, but his knight Wentworth convinces him to give her a chance. Wentworth himself tries to assist her because he believes she’s shown that she’s loyal, and he believes she’s trying to help, even if he doesn’t fully understand.

It’s also nice that it deviates from a straight up otome game. Wentworth (or Sir Cain), for example, feels like he would dutifully protect Kiara, interest or no. And he would also protect everyone else. His character comes off as a genuine, chivalrous knight with a duty to protect, and not as someone lusting over other people.

The general worldbuilding is fine enough and I didn’t have a problem with the characters for the most part, so I was trying to figure out why the book wasn’t clicking for me. And then I realized it: much of this book is told like a ‘summary’. Rarely are we dropped into a scene and truly get to watch the characters interact with each other. Rather, we’ll get paragraph after paragraph of infodumping about the world, and overviews of what people did with their day.

The best parts were when we get to really spend time with the characters interacting, but those are just sprinkled in periodically.

Unfortunately, this also happened with Reggie and Kiara’s relationship. A lot of it gets summarized as them spending time in the library together, but we don’t really see it form. We get maybe one actual scene with them before we’re supposed to believe they’re close friends, and so the shift from acquaintances to friends doesn’t quite hit and it ends up feeling like we’re just being told they’re friends.

There’s also a problem of Kiara coming off as a silent protagonist sometimes. People will be talking to her, and we’ll get paragraphs about her thought process, but she doesn’t actually say much if anything. Just look at this passage:

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“I wouldn’t if I were you. This sort of thing isn’t fit for a lady’s eyes,” he explained vaguely, and at first I didn’t understand what he meant. Then he continued, “If it were just an interrogation, I wouldn’t stop you, but... well...” At last, I realized what he was getting at.

The captive was awake, and the interrogation had started... but it probably wasn’t going well, which meant they might have to resort to some “enhanced” techniques. That was the part he didn’t want me to see.

Frankly, with my past-life sensibilities, the mere suggestion of it being more than an interrogation was utterly terrifying. Part of me wanted to stop them, but at the same time, I knew it was a necessary sacrifice if I wanted to protect the lives of everyone in the castle. Instead, all I could do was keep my distance.

But while I had the privilege of putting my head in the sand, I was essentially forcing Cain and the others to do my dirty work, and that gnawed at my conscience.

“From what we can tell, the man’s employer has blackmailed him into silence, so the process is taking some time,” Cain explained, as if to allay my fears. “But I estimate I’ll have an update for you soon.”

“Very well.”

Nodding, I decided to return to my quarters. But just as I turned to go, Cain suddenly grabbed my hand. His grip wasn’t tight or restrictive; if anything, it felt as though he was simply reaching out in concern.

“You don’t have to bottle it all up inside, you know.”

Puzzled, I looked up at him... and found him gazing at me sorrowfully.

“You’ve only just come of age, and after all the hardship you’ve endured, I imagine you must’ve had to teach yourself to turn off your emotions at a moment’s notice. But you don’t have to feel guilty about your own discomfort.”

I stared at him in shock. It felt like he’d seen right through me... and on top of that, he was trying to comfort me. While I was grateful for his thoughtfulness, I was still too perplexed to respond. This silence seemed to encourage Cain to continue.

“Women are, by nature, intrinsically compassionate creatures. Is it not human to fear the act of murder? Likewise, as men, it is our duty to take on the most gruesome tasks. So by all means, let us protect your purity; we wouldn’t have it any other way.”

I could feel my face turning redder than a tomato. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine someone would reference my “purity”! And right to my face! I had half a mind to correct the record and tell him I really wasn’t worth protecting.

Ugh... I should’ve said thank you and left while I still had the chance! Why do all the guys in this world always drop these cheesy lines like it’s nothing?! Well... maybe not ALL the guys. I guess there’s Harris, the chef’s apprentice—at least HE acts like a normal boy. Come to think of it, didn’t Reggie make some cheesy remarks of his own a while back? But I remember there was this weird sexual tension in the air, so I couldn’t really say anything... Gahhh!

Screaming internally, I put a hand over my face. Meanwhile, Cain seemed to intuit how I’d reacted to his statement. He chuckled quietly. “You don’t know how to take a compliment, do you?”

I had no comeback to this. He was entirely correct. Rrgh! Could you not grin at me and squeeze my hand?! I was so mortified, I could scarcely remember how to breathe.

“Glad to see I’ve cheered you up,” he commented.

“What?”

“It’s not healthy to let yourself be consumed with regret or pain; it will adversely affect your decision-making skills. Now then, go get some sleep. We’ll need you rested up for tomorrow.”

Smiling, he relinquished his grip on my hand. I nodded and walked off.

So, uh... Was he just messing with me to knock me out of my funk? That’s even more humiliating.

Cain was a handsome guy. I could imagine he probably enjoyed getting a rise out of all the girls. Yeah, that’s it. He does this with everyone. I needed to tell myself that, or else I didn’t know how I was going to face him tomorrow morning.

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Compare how much Wentworth (underlined) said compared to the three measly words Kiara (underlined, bold) said in all of that text. I could only picture her standing there staring dumbly in the air the whole time, spaced out.

The author was writing this as a web novel and never planning on publishing, and was very surprised when publishing it was offered. I do think there is a fair amount of thought put into the book and the background politics, the spellcasting and the world, and I particularly liked the character of Wentworth. I also liked that characters could reasonably disagree with Kiara without being the bad guys. I think there’s a lot of good to be found here, but since the author was just writing as a hobby, it didn’t get the developmental editing it probably needed to take us from “telling a story” to “showing a story”.

Those issues made it difficult to ‘get into the action’, and the story didn’t pick up much more until the end when Kiara was finally able to be a more active participant. I think the author could write a much better book than this, but because this was purely written to be self-indulgent it probably wasn’t tweaked to be their best work, so there’s a good chance that the books after this one are improved.

Overall, if you think it sounds interesting, give it a read, but realize that at this point it’s written with a lot of exposition.

Next up is “Blue Flag Volumes 1-8” by KAITO.

Buy it here:

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3