As Adlet and the other Braves of the Six Flowers stand in the Howling Vilelands debating how to cross a huge gorge that separates from the Evil God they have come to kill, Goldof races away from the group without any explanation. Goldof has always been the “silent and brooding” member of the Braves and, with his previous master, the princess Nashetania, revealed to be a fake Brave and actually working for the fiends who live in the Howling Vilelands, Goldof has been the subject of suspicion from the other Braves. Soon they learn they’re in even deeper trouble as it appears that Nashetania has truly betrayed them and Chamo is injured with only hours to live. Unless, that is, Adlet can figure out the trick to how Chamo was injured first!
Forgive me if this review seems like a rehash of the previous two Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers light novel reviews, but at this point I think that author Ishio Yamagata can only write one plot and it’s not even a very good plot. Yamagata’s “mysteries” rely entirely too much on withholding huge amounts of information from the reader, and since most conflicts are framed as a mystery of sorts, this ultimately makes most of the resolutions feel very unsatisfying. Plus, by this point it’s clear that fiends can do whatever Yamagata needs them to do in the story. They aren’t even supposed to be intelligent but clearly that isn’t always the case, and the fact that Yamagata doesn’t even set up clear, in-universe rules for how the world works feels horrendously lazy and ill-thought out.
I suppose the one bright note in this volume is that we do not get any more Braves joining the story at least. The bad news side to that is that the story once again has an opportunity to confirm that a character is, in fact, a true Brave but once again chickens out on doing so (much like how the effect of Hans’ death and revival on the Brave’s crest in the second volume seems to confirm him as a true Brave but this was later backtracked). This is what I mean when I say that Yamagata withholds far too much information from the viewer; by the end of the third volume it would be perfectly reasonable for a reader to be sure that one or two characters, out of seven, are in fact genuinely ordained by a higher power to go kill a god, but Yamagata doesn’t even want to give that up! Frustratingly, there is no progress made whatsoever in determining the identity of the seventh, fake Brave in this volume. Honestly, looking back at the story this feels more like an odd side-quest to the main adventure that the series can ill afford to take.
To be clear, by this point I have come across spoilers which have told me who the seventh brave is. I actually went looking years ago after the anime ended and it seemed unlikely that we would get the novels licensed. And that is the only reason why I am willing to give the fourth volume in this series one last chance to impress me. I want to see if Yamagata can at least pull off that reveal well, if it can back-track and make this reveal feel convincing and planned (since, by this point, all seven of the Braves do seem like true Braves so revealing any of them to be a traitor is going to be a bit of a stretch).
At this point I do not have high hopes. These past two volumes have been a mess of plotting, a mishmash of character moments (Goldof’s reasonings for his devotion to Nashetania are paper-thin and anime as sin), and an utter disregard for any kind of lore-building that the setting desperately needs. There aren’t many “mystery” light novels being published in the US currently and it’s a shame one of those few can barely even be called a mystery due to its poor structure and lack of forethought.