Light Novel: Sword Oratoria Vol 3

Sword Oratoria Vol 3
Rating: 5/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy 
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

After the tumultuous events in the Dungeon, Aiz has finally reached the vaulted Level 6! But in spite of this amazing news, the Sword Princess seems to be completely depressed. There are two reasons.
The first is that she finally managed to meet the white-haired boy again, but once more, he ran away from her with everything he had. The second is that the monster tamer she fought so hard against knew her name--a name that absolutely no one else should know, and yet...
Meanwhile, from the depths of the Dungeon comes a mysterious crystal ball that's about to plunge both underground and surface worlds quietly into chaos! 

Sword Oratoria continues to be one of my favourite light novels, I'm not going to lie to you guys. Not only are there completely gorgeous, fun, pull out full colour pages with some intriguing quotes, and fantastic illustrations...but this light novel series continues to be well written, thorough, vivid and atmospheric. The character development is fantastic, the plot  and it's threads all come together and aaahhh so good! 

Every single time I read this spin off light novel, I'm always like "okay...if this is this good I need to read the original series light novel instead of just the manga!" but I've got so many volumes to catch up for it! I just really love the writing for this light novel series, and I get so lost in the book when I'm reading. 

Volume 3 is a few days on from the end of Volume 2, and the opening is rather ominous...which of course pulls you straight in and has you hooked to find out what happens. There's a little bit of a recap smoothly slotted in without taking too long. Just enough to jog your memory, and it's really well done as it's via the characters looking back over everything that's happened rather than just shoving it in the narrative for a paragraph or two! I like how the plot has continued on, with a few new threads being added in, but the mystery from last volume popping up again and adding some more intrigue to it! I'm so curious to see where it's going to go, I feel like it's being really well done...keeping you intrigued and throwing in other little details and sub plots to draw your attention away before pulling you back! 

We get some new characters in this volume, and some old favourites, Asfi, some members of Hermes familia...I have to say I love meeting new familias and the characters from each! There's Dionysus, Filvis and some insight in to her, and Lulune! I love how we get some new characters that pique our interest and that we hope to see again, and then we get some old faces from previous volumes that I at least, had hoped to see again! I also love that we get more insight in to these semi new faces as well as seeing development in our main group. 

I have to say, Bete is growing on me. I didn't like him much in the first volume....because you know...Bell. But his character is really, really growing on me and I'm hoping we can get more of his background and so on. His bickering with Filvis cracks me up, and I have a feeling he cares a lot more than he lets on! I actually really enjoyed Bete and Lefiya teaming up and seeing them work together and getting to see so much of them. 

I felt like there wasn't as much Aiz as usual in this volume, I mean we had her and her POV, and then we had Bete, Lefiya and Filvis and so on. As much as I love Aiz, it was nice to get to see and know the other characters a little bit. I feel like Lefiya really comes in to her own in this book with some not so gentle help from Bete. (He totally cares). But yes, Aiz is there..but I feel like she takes a backseat a little bit...sort of. 

There's a tonne of action in this volume, plenty of dungeon crawling and fight scenes and I really get sucked in to the dungeon with the characters, I feel like I'm down there with them, I can feel the tension and the danger, I can picture everything really vividly, and I'm always slightly on edge when they're in the dungeon waiting for the monsters to pop out! The pace is very good, and fits so well with all the action, as well as the mystery element. 

Like I said, we get a continuation of one plot thread from the last book. There are some questions answered in this little ongoing mystery, but there's still plenty left unanswered, plus plot threads to carry us to next book. I'm not sure how long this mystery will go on for, but I feel like it's going along at a nice pace, and there's enough going on plot wise to make the mystery and the wait for its conclusion really enjoyable, plus I feel like you can sink your teeth in to it. There's also a nice mystery going around Aiz, and I feel like that really stepped up a bit this book and I have aaalll the theories! 

One of the things I like most about this series, is that after reading (in my case the manga), you see how Aiz interacts with Bell and how Bell interacts with her but you're not really sure how Aiz feels about Bell. This series however, gives you some great viewpoints in to her as a character, and what her feelings for Bell are. We see glimpses of what I'm fairly sure is Volume 4 of the manga, and you know...Bell. Obviously. There's also that meeting between Aiz and Bell....let's just say I was cheering a lot and I'm so excited to see it all in the next volume of this light novel series! I'm so ready. Seriously. I just love reading both of the series and seeing both view points, but I love how this series rather than just being the same but all from Aiz's point of view, we get Aiz off on her own adventures with her own stuff to deal with! 

Sword Oratoria is genuinely such an enjoyable light novel series, and if you've read Is It Wrong then you seriously need to pick this up! It gives such great insight in to Aiz, and her and Bell's relationship and what she thinks and so on...but it also lets you get to know the rest of Loki Familia and see more of the world and the dungeons and gives you another plot to enjoy! I'm thoroughly enjoying this series and forever looking forward to the next volume! This series will also be the reason I end up reading the Is It Wrong light novels...eventually!