Light Novel: Sword Oratoria 5

Sword Oratoria Vol 5
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

The Dungeon's no place for a happy reunion!

After the massive battle that took place on the fifty-ninth floor, Loki Familia embarks on a triumphant return to the surface only to be interrupted by the appearance of an Irregular that forces them to make camp on the eighteenth floor. 

There, Aiz unexpectedly stumbles upon the unconscious form of a familiar white-haired boy, who a certain young elf couldn't be less excited to see. The other members of her familia are curious about him, hoping to find out more about the fastest-growing adventurer in history, but Lefiya has other ideas...

The prologue for this volume swiftly catches us up or rather...refreshes our memories of the previous volume and everything soon comes flooding back until we're right back with the characters. Aiz and Co attempt to return to the surface but have to hole up on the 18th floor, and swiftly end up meeting up with Bell, Welf and Lilly who narrowly escaped a monster of their own. Meanwhile the Gods and Goddesses meet up to share info and Loki starts to probe about the new monster species. Loki, Dionysus and Hermes are certainly an unlikely trio to be working together, and I find them entertaining! Freya....well, she's more and more suspicious by the volume, and Loki appears to be on to her, thank the lord someone is! 

I have to be honest with you guys, Lefiya is starting to irritate me now. Although she and Bell end up lost and alone together and kind of come to an understanding. They have to work together when they spot some Evils in the forests of floor 18 and get trapped by a new monster, and I did like seeing them working together and come to somewhat of an understanding. But Lefiya has seriously been starting to bug me ever since last volume, and this volume she kind of pushed me over the edge, and I'm not entirely sure I'll like her much anymore because I just find her so irritating now! 

Our characters are having quite the party on the 18th Floor, as Hestia and Hermes finally pop up and unite with both groups. There's much speculating this volume about Aiz and if she has the blood of a spirit like Welfs family. Turns out she is according to Riveria but that just deepens the mystery around her and leaves us with plenty of questions about her....for example, who are her parents? I need more information badly! 

We get to dig deeper in to the characters as well as the mystery and the plot as more details are layered in to the plot. Some of the characters we don't see a lot of and don't get much glory, get their chance to shine and we went in depth in to some of the relationships between the characters. 

To be honest with you all, not much happens in this volume, there's only really one battle scene. There's some humour, there's some depth added to the characters and relationships, there's some little threads and tidbits dropped in to keep you intrigued and then at the end a certain piece of interesting information is dropped...but overall it wasn't the most action packed and speedy of volumes, although I do assume all the information dropped is relevant to upcoming developments!