The Fall 2024 Light Novel Guide

Victoria of Many Faces

What's It About? 

In an age when spies act behind the scenes in every land, Chloe spends her days successfully carrying out even the most difficult missions due to her unparalleled disguise skills and martial arts abilities. However, after the betrayal of her boss, she suddenly disappears-as Chloe plans to redo her life as the ordinary citizen Victoria in the neighboring kingdom of Ashberry, striving for a “normal” life. However, Victoria's peaceful life is abruptly cut short as she begins to get involved with many people. In this new land, her experiences and abilities from her days as a spy come in far more useful than she ever expected!! On the other hand, the second prince and the pursuer of the organization amongst others take an interest in Victoria's strength, and many shadows close in on the one with all the cards in her hand...!

Victoria of Many Faces has a story by Syuu and art by Nanna Fujimi, with English translation by Andria McKnight. Published by Yen On (September 24, 2024).

Is It Worth Reading?

Syuu's third English language release feels a little like a combination of the previous two: Victoria of Many Faces combines the coziness of Soup Forest with the politics of A Young Lady Finds Her True Calling Living with the Enemy. Victoria, formerly known as Chloe, which is also not her real name, is a superspy who would very much like to be retired. Her parents essentially sold her to the royal spy academy when she was eight, and while she wasn't happy about it, per se, she was also okay with it because she knew she could send presents and money to help her family out. That was all shattered the minute Chloe realized that her family was dead, and the spymaster hadn't bothered to tell her, despite his previous promises. So, Chloe did what any self-respecting woman would do: changed her name and got the hell out.

Now known as Victoria, our plucky heroine is ready to start her new life in another country. She's a remarkably appealing character, hypercompetent at just about everything because of her spy training (think a Victorian lady Twilight), but also still very, very human. That last is something she's really learning about in this novel as she basically detoxes from nineteen years in an espionage environment. Most of this feels motivated by the deaths of her parents and little sister and how badly learning about them shocked and hurt her. She's coping with a void she didn't realize was there, and the actions she takes are all in service of filling it, although I doubt that she's fully aware of that fact. Her first action is to adopt an abandoned six-year-old girl, Nonna. After that, she not only commits to raising Nonna, but she also tentatively begins forming relationships with elderly locals and gradually working down to (and up to) making bonds with people her age. Her relationships with Nonna and a knight captain named Jeff are the ones that mean the most to her, although she's reluctant to acknowledge the latter. In an unusual twist, that's not because she's unaware of his feelings or her own, it's due to her concern that her old life could catch up to her at any time. Nonna she could abscond with. Jeff? He's a knight and from a noble family. Even if he wasn't a liability, he would be hard to run away with.

This sort of clear thinking is a hallmark of the book. Victoria, who at twenty-seven is much older than most light novel heroines, never goes into a situation without assessing it and thinking all of her options through, and she teaches Nonna to do the same, although she's often surprised by how much of a blabbermouth a happy six-year-old can be. What she wants and can have are two separate things, and she's very aware of that fact, even as she tries to find ways to make everything work out. She's a heroine it's easy to root for, and if everyone in the book falls a little bit in love with her, well, it's hard to argue with that. This may not be the spy caper described in the back copy, but it is a very good book, one that once again shows that Syuu is a light novel author worth keeping an eye on.

Lauren Orsini
Rating:

What if you were really, really good at everything ? Victoria of Many Faces Vol. 1 is the light novel brave enough to answer this question. Protagonist Victoria can do anything she sets her mind to, but her most impressive accomplishment is to do it all by remaining an engaging and likable heroine who I wanted to spend more time with. (Compare this to The Blessing of Liefe, whose heroine was way too perfect for me.) Victoria's challenges feel real and consequential, and so do the relationships she forms. Set in a fantasy European setting, this novel eschews heroes and magic in favor of multi-kingdom intrigue, which has the unexpected result of making the story more high stakes and unique.

This “competence fantasy” stars the top intelligence operative at the moment that she chooses to defect from her agency. She assumes a new name in order to live covertly until the agency forgets about trying to bring her back or kill her. But Victoria's plans change abruptly on her very first day of freedom when she encounters an abandoned young girl and vows to take her in. Nonna, age five, becomes Victoria's reason for living, saving Victoria as much as Victoria saved her. In order to care for Nonna and give her a normal life, Victoria finds ways to make money, find stable housing, and train Nonna in the least suspicious and most useful of Victoria's many various skills from her life as a spy, from climbing to learning languages. It's Victoria's knowledge of languages that gets her work as a translator for a nobleman and his family, once again connecting her to Jeffrey, the handsome noble-born captain of the guard who earlier vouched for her as a safe guardian to Nonna, despite never having met her before. But old habits die hard, and Victoria can't help sneaking out at night to carry out spy missions—only this time, they're on her own terms.

Though Victoria is an extraordinary person with skills to match, she never felt overpowered for the world of the novel. The problems she faced each felt like slightly too much for her to handle, and I was always left wondering how Victoria would get out of her latest jam. She can do all sorts of things, but these skills feel hard earned rather than the result of grinding in a video game. I would have liked more development into Victoria's found family, and maybe a bit more interpersonal conflict; right now everyone gets along perfectly, making them feel one-dimensional. But as far as otome novels go, this one was pretty good.