The Spring 2024 Light Novel Guide

Brunhild the Dragonslayer

What's It About? 

Eden… A place of perfection… A place where man and beast live side by side in harmony… Eden's protector, the silver dragon, regularly visits retribution upon those who would bring harm to paradise. But when the dragon discovers a human girl on the shores of Eden, he decides to raise her as his own. He teaches her that if she is to be welcomed into God's Kingdom after death, she must not harbor hatred in her heart. But when human machinations mercilessly snuff out the dragon's life, the girl must choose whether to heed the dragon's dying wish and stay the course of righteousness…or walk a path of vengeance.

Brunhild the Dragonslayer has a story by Yuiko Agarizaki and art by Aoaso. English translation by Jennifer Ward, and published by Yen On. (May 21, 2024)

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Something unrelentingly bleak about this book undermines a lot of what makes it good. That's perhaps not surprising – it draws equally from Abrahamic lore about the Garden of Eden and the Germanic sagas of Brunhild, better known in its operatic form Ring of the Nibelungen. It's an awkward mix of mythologies; in the story's world, Edens are idyllic islands where all manner of creatures get along, can speak to each other in the True Language, and the fruit of knowledge grows in abundance. A dragon guards each Eden, and human greed and hubris have led to the systematic destruction of the Edens in a desperate attempt to take their treasures for humankind. But every time an Eden loses its dragon, the island goes up in flames, and all the things humans wanted are turned to ash. And yet, humans keep trying, over and over again.

The story follows one particular Eden and its dragon. When a failed attempt to conquer it leaves a kidnapped toddler behind, the dragon takes her in and raises her as his child. (Weird Oedipal stuff does rear its head, but interestingly enough, it doesn't end up mattering.) The child turns out to be Brunhild, the daughter of the Siegfried family in the city of Nibelungen, and when eventually Eden is attacked again, Brunhild is returned to “civilization.” But she's livid that her biological father killed her actual father, and the story follows her path to revenge in a mildly awkward version of the legendary Brunhild's journey to kill Siegfried. The awkwardness comes not from the writing, which is quite good, but from how Brunhild and the humans she interacts with.

Brunhild is just a ball of manipulative rage, willing to throw away all of her dragon father's Abrahamic teachings about not killing others in favor of vengeance, even though she knows that doing so will mean she won't be reunited with him in Heaven. Her anger consumes her in a way that could have been sympathetic but ultimately isn't. It drives her to ruin an impressive number of lives, either via murder or having to live with what she's done. The only remotely sympathetic character is the dragon, and he's not present for most of the story; Brunhild's biological brother Sigurd comes close, but he's still very much a victim of both his father and his sister, reaffirming the fact that there's nothing but tragedy to be found here.

Tragedy is a legitimate literary mode of expression, but it loses power when used with too heavy a hand. That's what happened here – there's just horror piled on tragedy added to bleakness, which makes for a thoroughly depressing read. That is, in all likelihood, the point. Humans can't have nice things because of the very things that make them human, and a little knowledge can prove destructive in the wrong hands. But a little light is still necessary to make the darkness work. That's something this novel misses in its drive to tell its story.