The Fall 2024 Light Novel Guide

The Lout of the Count's Family

What's It About? 

Ever dreamt of waking up inside a novel? For Kim Roksu, this dream becomes reality when he finds himself in the shoes of Cale Henituse, the lazy, wine-loving son of a count—and punching bag for the novel's destined hero. Determined to dodge his grim fate, this new Cale Henituse vows to rewrite his story, aiming for a life of leisure far from heroic deeds and inevitable beatdowns.

But the path to a peaceful life is twisted by irony. As Cale plots his escape from destiny, he inadvertently gathers a motley crew of magical allies—including a haughty baby dragon and two mischievous kitten shapeshifters. Every attempt to avoid heroism entangles him further in a whirlwind of unforeseen adventures, proving that sometimes the best heroes are the ones who resist the call.

The Lout of the Count's Family is written by Yu Ryeo-Han. English translation by Henry Shin (MiracleRifle Translations), Lauren Na. Published by Seven Seas (September 3, 2024).

---

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Change the word “lout” to “villainess” and you would almost have the same novel. Despite starring a male protagonist, The Lout of the Count's Family reads almost exactly like a villainess isekai, featuring a hero who recognizes his original role in the story and wants nothing much to do with it – he doesn't need to be the hero and he'd rather not endure undue pain, thanks very much. It's different enough not to feel like a retread, but familiar enough to be immediately appealing.

The lout, in this case, is Cale Henituse, the eldest son of the prestigious Henituse family and a minor villain in a novel series. Before waking up one morning in a new bed and body, Cale was Kim Roksu, a young Korean man. Roksu was orphaned at an early age and that's colored his entire life, so when he realizes that he's somehow become Cale, he figures that this is a pretty good deal. There's just one caveat: he's read the first five volumes of the novel series and he knows that Cale gets the snot beaten out of him by the book's hero, Choi Han. (Yes, he's been isekai'd into an isekai novel. How very metafictional.) Since Cale is not into pain or suffering, he decides to circumvent the problem, set the hero up for his journey in another way, and then enjoy being an indolent son of privilege.

Naturally, this does not work the way he plans, and we've all read enough books like this to know that he's going to finagle his way right into the role Choi Han was meant to occupy. Like Katarina and Yumiella before him, Cale is fairly unaware of how he's warping the original plot. His attempts to redirect Choi end up making him his ally, if not subordinate, he accidentally befriends powerful demihumans, and things just generally go sideways in ways he's not fully appreciative of. He's not completely clueless; just clueless enough that the story beats are familiar in a non-annoying way. Part of this comes down to his life as Kim Roksu and how that influences his view of the world, but the greater part is simply that he's aware of the minutiae of his new story and makes the conscious decision to use it, even if he's a bit shortsighted as to the outcome.

The writing feels like a cut above your typical story in this vein, and despite the familiar elements, this does feel more like a regular novel rather than a light one. (Or the Korean version thereof.) It's more genre fantasy than anything, and that works in our favor, both in terms of the longer page count and the quality of the text. All in all, this may not be the best book, but I, for one, am happy that we're getting more publishers branching out in terms of what they license.

---

Lauren Orsini

Rating:

Here's how the trope usually goes: an isekai protagonist wakes up in the body of a character from the book they were just reading and uses their modern-day knowledge and personality to avoid said character's missteps. Here's what this MC does when he wakes up in the body of a mean drunk: continues drinking and being mean to people. In a way, Lout of Count's Family is wildly original by subverting the number one load-bearing trope of isekai fiction. But I'm not confident that it will be successful. Since the protagonist never shares his strategy with the reader, it's unclear why a formerly ordinary South Korean man has decided to engage cruelly and indulge in heavy day drinking now that he is reborn as this story's titular lout.

The MC, who identifies himself as a formerly modern-day South Korean man named Kim Roksu, has been suddenly reborn as Cale Henituse, the vulgar, lousy oldest son of a nobleman, in a fantasy novel. Thanks to his knowledge of the book, Cale knows that he will soon meet the hero and get his ass handed to him in chapter one before the hero moves on to much more formidable and consequential foes. Cale doesn't want that, so he takes precautions much like any other isekai protagonist would. Weirdly though, he does this while leaning heavily into his new role: becoming far more aggressive and rude than he was in his previous life. Is Cale doing this to fit in so nobody suspects he's no longer the same person on the inside? Could he be compelled to drink heavily because the body he was reincarnated to is already addicted to alcohol? Who knows! Cale never tells us, so readers are forced to watch him make one unheroic decision after the next, wondering whether we are supposed to root for him or not. Every now and then he drops the act and becomes a typical isekai hero just for fun, and I wonder if maybe the author considered a lot of different directions for the story but never decided on just one. If I knew Cale's goal was, for example, to pretend to be a jerk to lower the expectations of characters around him, I could understand his logic. But as the novel progressed, I still couldn't figure out his game.

Also, don't you just love it when somebody describes the plot of an entire book you've never read, like a really granular scene-by-scene? Cale is always going on about what is supposed to happen next in the novel he's stuck in, and since I haven't read this nonexistent book, I have to take his word for it. The result is that Cale utilizes one deus ex machina after another and I can't gauge whether it makes sense because he's the only one who read the book. Oh, here's a trapped dragon that only Cale knows about, and that can be freed with a magic MacGuffin he just acquired somehow—sure, I guess. Oh, here's a secret cave where a character I've never heard of is going to find a cool item unless Cale nabs it first—if you say so. He read the book and I didn't, so he's the only one of the two of us who understands why this works. He's also the only one who cares.

---