Spice & Wolf, Vol. 2 (book) by Isuna Hasekura, illustrated by Jyuu Ayakura

Spice & Wolf vol. 2 is a fantasy novel set in a world much like Europe in the Middle Ages. I dislike the cover image I'm using in my post, but, thankfully, Yen Press wised up. This more "realistic" image is a dust jacket - underneath is a manga/anime-style cover.

Review:

The first volume of Spice & Wolf was one of the better light novels I've read. I finally decided to read the second volume. If you've seen the anime: the second half of season 1 covers the events of this volume. It's been long enough since I last saw the show that I'm not entirely sure which details differ, but the general events are the same.

Holo and Lawrence are still traveling together, and, with Holo's help, Lawrence is able to get a really good deal on a wagon-load of armor. Lawrence knows that, at this time of year, armor sells pretty well at their next stop, Ruvinheigen, and the money would bring him one step closer to his dream, settling down and opening a shop.

Then things turn very sour. Lawrence learns that his wagon-load of armor is now worth one tenth what he'd estimated. He has two days to repay his debt to the Remelio Company, which is itself close to bankruptcy because of armor's sudden drop in value. The guild Lawrence is associated with can't lend him money, and neither can other guild members. If he can't repay his debt, he'll be sold into slavery. Holo could transform into a wolf and help him escape the city, but his life as a merchant would be over and he would be on the run forever.

A good chunk of my description could be considered a spoiler, because Lawrence doesn't find out the bad news about the armor until halfway through the volume. That was one of the things I didn't like about this book: the pacing. Although the introduction of Norah, the shepherdess, was necessary, and it was nice to see Holo and Lawrence bickering and flirting, I wish Hasekura could have tightened all that up. The first half of the book was a bit of a slog for me, as I waited for something to actually happen. The second half was much more exciting.

Spice & Wolf II (anime TV series), via Hulu

Synopsis:

In the first half of this season, a rift begins to grow between Holo and Lawrence. Then Holo learns that Lawrence has been keeping painful information from her, information relating to their journey to her home in the north. This seems to be the last straw for Holo, who begins staying with a young merchant who is "manly" in ways that Lawrence is not: he puts Holo on a pedestal and challenges Lawrence in order to save her (he believes that Holo was forced to stay with Lawrence due to debts she had accrued).

Although it feels like Lawrence has lost Holo, he's not willing to give up without a fight. Lawrence challenges the young merchant to a merchants' duel involving fool's gold. Fool's gold has recently become very sought-after. If the price of fool's gold continues to stay high, the young merchant wins. If the price plummets, Lawrence wins. Even if the young merchant wins, there is no guarantee Holo will really want to stay with him and marry him, but the young merchant has no doubt about their love for each other. It looks unlikely that the merchant could possibly lose, but if Lawrence can get enough money at just the right time, he might stand a chance.

In the second half of the season, Holo and Lawrence stop at a town in order to try to find out more information about the location of her home. One of the town's primary commodities is fur, but for some reason no one is allowed to sell fur at the moment - fur merchants are camping out right outside of town. Lawrence and Holo learn a bit more about what's going on and meet a female merchant who has a plan that could earn them all a nice profit. Lawrence finally has a chance at the shop he's always wanted, but it's a chance that only comes at great risk. The female merchant appears to be hiding something. Not only that, but the merchant's plan hinges upon selling Holo. In theory, Lawrence should be able to buy her back, but that's only if everything goes according to plan.

Commentary:

I liked the first half of this season so much that I found myself thinking that this season was actually better than the first. As far as the economics went, I could (sort of) follow what was going on, and it was so much fun watching Lawrence scramble in a situation where, technically, there wasn't much risk to him as a merchant but a lot of risk to him as a man.

Then came the second half of the season. It's been a while since I watched this, and I probably delayed writing the post for too long, but I do think my fuzzy memories of the second half of the season are at least in part due to it not being as interesting as the first half.

Spice & Wolf, Vol. 1 (book) by Isuna Hasekura, illustrated by Jyuu Ayakura

Synopsis:

This book takes place in a time and place very much like Europe in the Middle Ages. Lawrence is a lonely traveling merchant who dreams of making enough money to be able to open his own shop and finally settle down.

His life is complicated by the discovery of a beautiful naked girl sleeping in his cart - a girl who just happens to have wolf ears and a tail. The girl's name is Holo, Holo the Wisewolf, and she has been the wolf goddess of the harvest for generations in one of the villages Lawrence passes through regularly. However, that village no longer needs Holo, and Holo, as lonely as Lawrence, wants nothing more than to travel back to the forests in the north where she was born.

Holo and Lawrence strike up a deal: Lawrence will accompany Holo to the north, as long as Holo helps him profit more than he would have alone. Holo is by no means an inexpensive travel companion (she likes wearing high quality clothes, and she has an obsession with tasty food and drink), but she's as good at bargaining and detecting lies as she claims to be, and she does negotiate more profit for Lawrence than he could have on his own.

Then Lawrence and Holo learn about a particular deal involving depreciating silver currency. If they can figure everything out and make the right deals, they could stand to make an amazing profit - but it eventually becomes clear that, if they're not careful, they might just as easily end up turned over to the Church, where Holo would be seen as a demon-possessed girl and she and Lawrence would be burned as heretics.

Commentary:

This light novel and the ones that come after it inspired the anime, but I saw the anime first. I had actually heard about this book long before I saw the anime, mainly because of the controversy over the cover. The cover image you see in my blog is not the cover the original Japanese version of this book had, and, from what I can remember, it was extremely difficult to get the version of the cover with the original artwork. I remember assuming that the cover re-design was an attempt by Yen Press to market the book to a wider audience. In my opinion, the new cover is hideous. Also, what was point, when the original cover actually matched the illustrations inside the book?

This book is almost exactly like what I remember of the anime, up to the resolution of the story arc involving the silver trenni coins. The primary difference is that a character who was female in the anime is male in the book - I'm assuming he was turned into a she in the hopes of attracting more male otaku.

As is usually the case with light novels, I found myself preferring the anime to the novel the anime was based on. I didn't find all the financial scheming any easier to understand in the novel - in fact, I think more of it went over my head this time than when I was watching the anime. I found the interplay between Lawrence and Holo to be more charming and clever when I could actually watch and hear the two of them. That said, just as their relationship was the strongest part of the anime, it was also the strongest part of this book, and I really enjoyed reading about the two of them getting to know each other and learning how to work and live together.

Spice and Wolf, Season One (anime TV series), via Hulu

I'm not doing so great with the whole "read more and better books" thing, am I? The year's only just started, and I already have three TV show posts and no book posts...

By the way, there is indeed a second season for this series. All or most of it is available on Hulu right now, and I considered waiting until I'd watched everything before writing this post. However, after I finished the first season, I decided to write two posts, one for each season, because the first season ends at a point that makes it easy to do this.

For once, my synopsis isn't too spoiler-filled. I can't necessarily say the same for the commentary, however. [Looking it over, now that I've written the whole thing, I'm pretty sure you could read the whole post if you were so inclined, without ruining anything for yourself.]

Synopsis:

This series takes place in a place and time very much like Europe in the Middle Ages. Lawrence is a peddler who travels from town to town, buying and selling things. One particular town he regularly visits has stories about Holo, a harvest deity who takes the form of a wolf. Belief in Holo has waned, however, and, although the town still practices pagan rituals, the times have changed. The Church is growing stronger, and commerce and new ways of doing things allow the town to prosper without relying on Holo any longer.

As he is leaving the village, Lawrence is shocked to discover a girl with wolf ears and a tail in his cart. That girl is Holo in her human form. Holo makes a deal with him. She knows the village no longer needs or wants her, so she wants to go back to her homeland in the north. By binding herself to the wheat Lawrence was transporting, Holo can leave the village she served for so long. In exchange for helping Lawrence with his business deals, Lawrence must take Holo and the wheat she is bound to back to her homeland.

Many episodes show Lawrence and Holo getting to know each other as they travel. Lawrence does business as usual, sometimes very quick and simple business, such as when he sells a bunch of furs, and sometimes more complex and twisty business, such as when he gets involved in an attempt to exchange one kind of silver coin for another one that's worth more (in this place and time period, there are many, many different kinds of currency, some with slightly greater silver content than others). All throughout, Holo helps Lawrence, teaching him and other merchants a thing or two about being crafty.

In the end, though, Lawrence finds himself in a situation that not even his and Holo's smarts combined may be able to get him out of. Deeply in debt after a deal gone bad, can a risky plan save him? Will he and Holo continue to be able to travel together as they have been?