星のカービィ あぶないグルメ屋敷! ?の巻

This is frequently recommended as a good first Japanese novel and while it's not my first (as far as proper novels go this is I think number 12 or 13) I have to agree. Reading this was largely a breeze but there was still a good handful of vocab and set phrases I had to look up, so it was comfortable but still had a good chunk to learn. The biggest thing you'll probably pick up is food vocab and a couple of good fight words. The toughest time I had with this book was actually one of the character's names. There's a character called パフェスキー夫人 (Parfaisuki fujin) which literally means "Parfait-Liking Woman" and I was thinking "okay, but what's her name?" until I looked it up and realized it's supposed to be spoken quickly, like "Ms. Parfaitski". It's sort of like if you called David Letterman "David, Letter Man" and thought Letter Man was some kind of weird title and thought "okay but what's his last name?" Other than that it was easy and I was knocking out a few chapters a day no sweat which was very satisfying.

The plot is a lot of fun, I'm not as versed in Kirby as I am in Mario, but as long as you know the general gist of it and don't mind looking up the occasional enemy name you'll be fine. I liked that the story was basically a really classical sitcom setup. Ms. Parfaitski is new in town and throwing a big party with a ton of food, so naturally Kirby and Dedede want an invite. Metaknight eventually shows up and reveals that he has room for a +1 and hijinks ensue. I won't reveal what the plan is, but the character interactions are incredibly funny, especially with the usually serious Metaknight getting suckered into some rather indignant scenarios. Kirby and Dedede actually have to work together for most of the book which is a lot of fun as well.

Things eventually take a shift towards the adventurous and you get some more classic Kirby action and while I did prefer the sitcom plot, it was a good way to bring the story to a head and round things out, and there's some cute wholesome messages at the end. In general I liked that the enemies from the games are just random townsfolk, there isn't a ton of worldbuilding but what we do get here is solid and it makes me want to go through some more of the classic Kirby games I haven't played yet since they tend to be pretty short anyhow.

This is definitely a charming novel and I'm easily down for more. The fact that it has a self-contained story with a beginning, middle, and end all in one volume makes for a more accessible and appealing story structure than something like Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, which I do enjoy but it kind of just keeps going. I think for a beginner something more finite and self-contained is better because you at least have an ending for your efforts if you do struggle at this level. This really wasn't a struggle at all though, the difficulty was just right and the actual material had me wanting to see what the next gag is, what the next character interaction would be, where the story goes. It's a legitimately good book, whereas Kuma Bear is cute but not exactly the most well-constructed story.