The Spring 2024 Light Novel Guide
Riviere and the Land of Prayer
What's It About?
Riviere and the Land of Prayer has a story by Jougi Shiraishi and art by Azure. English translation by Kevin Steinbach. Published by Yen On. (April 23, 2024)
Is It Worth Reading?
Rebecca Silverman
Rating:
The first three volumes of Jougi Shiraishi's Wandering Witch: The Journeys of Elaina are some of my favorite light novels, and while I feel that the series drops in quality after that point, I was still excited to pick up this spinoff set on a magicless island in the same world. The novel lands between the two “sets” of Elaina books in terms of enjoyment; it showcases both Shiraishi's persistent writing issues and their excellent grasp of human nature and how magic can affect it. In this series, the “magic” in question isn't what witches perform, but artifacts known as “sancta.” Sancta are items borne of someone's prayer to the cathedral on the island, but their wish-granting powers are patchy at best, not because they don't work, but because they work in unexpected ways. The eponymous Riviere is the witch equivalent, running an antique shop (which is in-world code for a store that sells sancta), and doing her best to keep harmful sancta off the streets. Naturally, this means that someone is doing the exact opposite for their own, nefarious reasons, and the action is primarily about the contrast between them.
Our point of view character is MacMillia, a young woman who has terrible luck with holding a job until Riviere takes her one. MacMillia offers us an outside perspective on the entire sancta issue, and while she can be annoying at times, this largely works. The story itself, however, doesn't take off until the fourth (of six) chapters, “The Perfect Couple,” which is both the best written in terms of Shiraishi's point about the sancta and the twists and turns of the plot. There are so many red herrings, little mysteries, and contradictions that the chapter feels like it takes inspiration from Golden Age mystery fiction, but the true strength of it is in the character's psychological makeup. It's MacMillia's first real experience with the dark side of humanity, and it puts Riviere's work into a sudden, harsh perspective.
As with Wandering Witch: The Journeys of Elaina (and Elaina does make a cameo in this volume), Shiraishi tends towards too many lighter moments and quirky characters who undercut their message. Does Riviere need to be one of those ancient loli types for the plot to work? What is the obsession with bread quality that rears its head in every Shiraishi work I've read? And why do the characters need to mention the name of the island roughly every five pages? All of these significantly distract from the actual story and make the book much less effective than it could be as if Shiraishi is afraid to write a serious novel, or at least one with overtly serious themes. That's not to say that light novels can't be, well, light, but Shiraishi doesn't do a great job of knowing when and how to implement that.
Still, this is a good book on average. Chapter four is where it takes off, but the preceding chapters aren't bad, and overall I'm left with a sense of mild enjoyment and a bit of sadness for what the novel could have been.
Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. Yen Press, BookWalker Global, and J-Novel Club are subsidiaries of KWE.
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