本好きの下剋上~司書になるためには手段を選んでいられません~第一部「兵士の娘1」

本が買えないなら、本を作ろう。でも、本をつくるにも紙がない。紙がないならば紙を作ろう。でも、紙を作るにも体力、腕力、身長、年齢、お金がない。

After book-loving Urano gets killed in an earthquake, she finds herself in an unfamiliar environment — she is now Myne, the daughter of a city guard and a textile worker, and lives with them and her big sister in a tiny apartment somewhere in a pre-industrial city. And Myne has three big problems: Her living standards are terrible, her new body is extremely weak and prone to fevers at the lightest exertion, and worst of all: there are no books to be found!

Over the course of this book, we see Myne’s attempts at improving her living standards and finding some way of making books herself. This turns out to be very challenging, as her abilities and opportunities are very limited. As a result, this first novel is essentially a slice of life story about Myne improving her environment with “inventions” like shampoo or pancakes, while attempting to create different kinds of paper substitutes. But it certainly is not going to stay this way forever…

In terms of the writing, Miya Kazuki uses relatively straight-forward grammar but a pretty big vocabulary. I had to look up words very frequently, but once I knew the words in a sentence I practically never had any issues understanding what was said, and over-all found it a very rewarding read. There is also an anime-adaptation, this volume is covered by episodes 1–6 of the first season. The anime does abbreviate or skip over some things, so the book is definitely worth reading even if you’re already watched it.