海の綺士団 1巻

Set in the 16th century, we follow protagonist アシェル, a woman recently arrived in Malta wanting to join the esteemed Knights of St. Johann, a religious all-male peace-keeping order, known especially for their work in keeping the Turkish threat under control.

I've really enjoyed アシェル as a character so far: she's the picture of a strong, independent woman, and at least in this first volume shows no inclination for romance with her fellow knights. I'm curious where the story will end up going; this felt very much like an introductory volume more than anything, so the story can pretty much go anywhere.

Vocab spread is not difficult if you've read any amount of works set in the same time period. I would say this is probably easier on the vocabulary than another one of the author's works set around the same time period, レバダン•希望の花, and there's full furigana to help the reader out.

Like レバダン, however, panels tend to be crammed with text if there's more than one person talking, and boy are there a lot of characters. Characters can get pretty samey-looking outside of a couple of main ones, though I didn't have too much trouble telling people apart.