The Spring 2024 Light Novel Guide

A Livid Lady's Guide to Getting Even

What's It About? 

Elizabeth Leiston, daughter of the influential prime minister, is a picture-perfect lady on the path to becoming the future queen of the Kingdom of Haldoria. But her life takes a sudden turn for the worst when her fiancé makes a show of publicly calling off their engagement. Soon after, he throws her in jail and starts spreading nasty rumors about her. The encouragement Elizabeth receives from her loyal waiting-maid, Mireille, and her inner fury are all she needs to reconsider her goals. Why should she continue devoting herself to a country that doesn't respect her when she can trample over it instead? She will get even with those who wronged her and bring down the damned kingdom, even if it's the last thing she does! Luckily, Elizabeth is no damsel in distress and has seven powerful magic grimoires she won't hesitate to use. Get ready because this ruthless lady is out for blood!

A Livid Lady's Guide to Getting Even has a story by Metabo Hagure and art by masami. English translation by Rymane Tsouria, and published by J-Novel Heart; PublishDrive edition. (April 26, 2024)

Content Warning: graphic depictions of rape and deaths of children

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

How much vengeance is too much? I'd say that it's when the punishment outstrips the crime, and I feel like that may have happened in A Livid Lady's Guide to Getting Even. The premise starts soundly enough, with Elizabeth facing the classic (false) denunciation scene wherein her horrible crown prince fiancé and his girlfriend frame her for petty acts of violence against said girlfriend. The prince's crony Robert then locks Elizabeth in a dungeon to await her fate, while Prince Friede continues to make her do his paperwork from behind bars. (He's a fool, but not stupid.) Elizabeth, of course, can escape at any time and when she does, she packs up her knowledge and heads to the neighboring empire's ambassador to ask for asylum, with the stated goal of getting revenge on Friede, which will naturally help the empire politically.

It's all fine at this point. There are awkward time jumps that don't feel like they serve much purpose beyond showing how astoundingly amazing Elizabeth (now calling herself Ellie) is. It isn't well-written but provides a decently good time. Things get dark when Friede gets his goons to attack the empire and Ellie sees her moment for vengeance – by slaughtering even the soldiers who surrender and cursing Robert in a truly horrific way. Now, does she have the right to be furious? What was done to her was patently unfair. But she was never in any actual danger, and merely fleeing the kingdom was enough to expose the government as incompetent. By bathing in the blood of her enemies, Elizabeth goes farther than they ever did, making her feel more villainous than your average light novel villainess. Yes, in times of war, the enemy soldiers commit some heinous acts in the course of it, and all that, but the glee with which Ellie and her comrades slice men in half still feels uncomfortable.

To be clear, that's got nothing to do with her being a woman who engages in warfare. It's entirely down to the vengeance feeling overblown, despite some authorial attempts to justify it. Did the soldier who was a rapist deserve what Ellie gave him? Absolutely. Did Robert deserve to be cursed to slaughter his family? Not so much. For every justified act, there are another two that go too far, and I think that revenge needs to suit the original slight if we're going to get behind it. If you're of a different opinion and enjoy your ladies drenched in blood and violence as well as hypercompetent, you'll probably like this more than I did.

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Lauren Orsini
Rating:

I love reading women's revenge fantasies. However, A Livid Lady's Guide to Getting Even does not belong among modern classics like The Remarried Empress, Your Throne, and Divorcing My Tyrant Ex-Husband. While all four books involve highly competent noblewomen making their royal exes pay, only A Livid Lady made me despise the main character. This gruesome revenge tale was so much grimmer than its cheery front cover made it seem.

When does it stop being “getting even” and become “getting to be a worse person than the people who wronged me?” Perhaps around the time that Ellie purchases a slave. Slavery in fantasy stories isn't necessarily a dealbreaker; in Divorcing My Tyrant Ex-Husband, Queen Robellia purchases and instantly frees every slave in her kingdom. Not so in Livid Lady. In one of several of the light novel's most disgusting scenes, Ellie not only purchases a trembling enslaved child but justifies slavery as a necessary social “safety net.” As you would expect from a protagonist who doesn't mind owning people, Ellie also has no qualms about slaughtering innocents for “no particular reason,” in her own words.

This novel is the definition of “well, that escalated quickly!” Things were going fine for Lady Elizabeth when her idiot fiancee, Prince Friede, suddenly decided to publicly arrest her at a party so he could be free to marry his mistress instead. Big mistake, since not only is Lady Elizabeth the power behind the throne, but she's also the most powerful person in the entire world, no exaggeration. While a few lucky people can harness one grimoire's power to cast magic spells, our protagonist can use EIGHT. It's no sweat for Lady Elizabeth, from storing enough food for an army in a slim personal inventory to summoning demons from Hell to bestow curses. So she escapes from jail, absconds to another country, changes her name to Ellie, and vows to make not only Prince Friede but every innocent person living in her homeland die a painful death. It's a blatant power fantasy, and Ellie is out for blood.

In other words, the protagonist is a complete psychopath. She has more power than God, and rather than using it to do anything good in this world, she chooses to make hundreds of people suffer. And when you consider that this is all in retaliation for her ex-fiancee humiliating her at a party, the punishment does not fit the crime.

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