The Beast Player (The Beast Player, Books 1-2)

by Nahoko Uehashi

[sa090]

I’m a huge fan of both anime series adapted from Uehashi Nahoko-sensei’s writing, so I easily went into this with high expectations. Did it deliver? Yes, yes it did.

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I read this book to fulfill the Herbology prompt for the OWLS readathon of 2019, and tbh it basically saved me since the two books I tried to read for this prompt were either not as interesting as I thought it’ll be (The Shadow Queen) or not my type of book-but-I-still-want-to-read-it (Forest of a Thousand Lanterns) respectively. I’ve already seen the anime for this book, Kemono no Souja Erin and I was astonished to see that the entirety of the 50 episode series was covered in these two books and here’s why, there are two more that cover Elin’s story. I really hope that Pushkin won’t pull a Scholastic move (only publishing the first two of a 10 book series) and stop publishing the books, it’s a really awesome story and more people definitely need to read it.

The best thing about Uehashi-sensei’s writing lies with the richness she writes everything in, from her world to her politics to her characters and the lore of her series. I really love it when authors spend the needed time to familiarize me with different aspect of their world, whether it’s the culture, lore, magic systems, layout, politics or anything else that might be relevant to the story later on. Uehashi-sensei didn’t disappoint me yet when it comes to these aspects, for example showing me how the people live in different parts of this world whether they’re commoners, rulers or in-between really shows how meticulous she is when it comes to her stories.

The main thing I believe I enjoyed in this book and in turn the series is Elin’s growth, she goes through so much from a very young age that it makes things difficult later on. In other words, she’s been exposed to many horrible things, and based on who she is, she gets put into many situations that demand that she makes a decision. Whether that decision is right or wrong is debatable, but the point is that it gives Elin the chance to grow. It’s even better when those around her get that chance because of her as well, they end up building their own ideas of course, Elin more often than not is a catalyst for change.

The message of self worth and values sent through this book is insanely important and especially in a time like this one where the majority of the stories dwindles down to being who ends up with who.... younger kids need to remember that there are way important stuff than that. Following your dream in a realistic way, working hard for it and making sure it’s really the right path for you to name a few things makes it a wonderful and very slow journey to follow with Elin. The slowness of the progression could be off putting at first, but the sense of intrigue is more than enough to keep me going.

I really hope to hear about the sequel soon because I want to know what happens to Elin after this in details. The anime has different aspects when it comes to the book and it covers the first two volumes only so there surely are a lot of details we don’t know a thing about just yet. Haven’t heard anything yet, but here’s to hoping!

Final rating: 4/5