Tearmoon Empire: Volume 12

After the events in the previous book, vol. 12 marks the beginning of a new arc. Bel has returned, but this time with a mysterious girl who may or may not be Mia's grandmother, Patricia. Since last time Bel very clearly died in front of so many people, the day has finally come for Mia to tell her friends about Bel's identity and origins. This comes with a brand new theory by Ludwig about the different timelines, which also explains why a lot of the characters have been seeing dreams from the guillotine world.

The book's main focus lies on the new SEEC program, established by Mia to educate children who are vulnerable to the Chaos Serpents' influence. The main reason is because Patricia seems to have been indoctrinated by the serpents due to family circumstances, and despite supposedly being her granddaughter, Mia doesn't remember much about Patricia's house. Or maybe she just doesn't want to remember. There's a number of new characters introduced, and the now 16-year-old Mia spends a lot of time thinking about the best way to run the SEEC program smoothly.

Speaking of Mia, the important decisions she makes are gradually becoming less accidental and more intentional. She's still highly powered by sweets and her motivations are still mostly selfish, of course, this is Mia after all… but there's been less moments of people simply misunderstanding her intentions and more of her actually leaving things up for interpretation on purpose. I really like how her character growth is undeniable, and yet Mia is still Mia at the core.

This book ends in a cliffhanger though, so I waited until vol. 13 was out to pick it up. Since it's the start of a new arc, it spends a lot of time laying the foundations and setting things up. There's also a bonus short story about Mia's personal maid from the previous timeline, which gives some more depth to not only the maid but Mia as well. It made me realize once again that Mia might have made terrible choices in that timeline, but she's always been so much more than just a selfish princess. I love her, and I will never get tired of reading about her.

That being said, I have to take off one star because of the translation. So far the series has been brilliantly translated and edited, but what happened to the QC for this one? There are so many errors that shouldn't have passed the editing stage. For example:

⇢ When Patricia was bathing they mistranslated 白い肌 to "ebony skin" while it should've been pale or ivory.

⇢ "このクッキーを少し持って行っていただけるかしら？" was translated to "Do you mind if I share some of these with them?" Failing to grasp context. This was Mia asking Lynsha to go deliver the cookies, not asking for the permission to do so herself. Japanese is a very context-heavy language, so this sort of translation fail is fatal because it could change the meaning entirely.

⇢ "Mia’s expression made a three-sixty, becoming an ebullient grin." …Isn't it one-eighty? Three-sixty would be the exact same expression, no? The original only says Mia's expression turns into a radiant smile, so this part didn't even exist.

It didn't ruin my enjoyment or anything, but this sort of errors can be quite distracting. I hope it'll be better for the next book, since it was never an issue before this particular volume. If you need proofreaders, hire me.