The Spring 2024 Light Novel Guide

Guillotine Bride

What's It About? 

Rinne has been sentenced to death. That's where the dragon princess' story should have ended. Instead, she's blown out of the sky en route to her execution and winds up in front of Ryuunosuke. The young boy has no time to be shocked by this wild development because the dragon girl needs him to lend her a hand—in marriage! For the sake of the world, Ryuunosuke has to marry Rinne and smother her with love because if he fails to keep her in check, the entire human race will probably go extinct...!

Guillotine Bride has a story by Daigo Murasaki and art by Kayahara. English translation by Kiki Piatkowska. Published by Yen On (May 21, 2024).

Is It Worth Reading?

Lauren Orsini

Rating:

Do you fantasize about being surrounded by beautiful, extraordinary—nay, mythical—girls who are all head over heels in love with your ordinary self? Then Guillotine Bride will not make you roll your eyes as much as I did while reading it. Harem stories are simply not my cup of tea, and I found the fanservice components of this book to be a drag. That major plot element aside, this light novel is a surprisingly tense, quick, and well-structured read.

Ryuunosuke is a completely unremarkable high school boy…(and there's always a but, in light novels), but he has a selfless streak, and he's always helping out people in trouble. So when he finds a strange, beautiful girl in a straitjacket in the park, his instinct isn't to run in terror but see what he can do to help. Soon, Ryuunosuke finds out that this girl, Rinne, is caught up in a top-secret organization to research and control “mythical girls”—and so are several members of his high school student council! Rinne has dragon powers, Mari has vampire powers, and Ranko is head of the scientific research department. Of course, they're all gorgeous, and they're all in love with Ryuunosuke. And for Plot Reasons, two out of three need to live together with him, sharing a bath and accidentally happening on one another in the nude, as in harem stories immemorial. Plus, Ryuunosuke has a super special power that allows him to save and “power up” mythical girls by making them his brides because, of course, he does!

If this premise hooks you, keep reading. Hidden underneath the many, many cheesecake moments is a tightly structured story with an intense, high-impact finish. I can easily see Guillotine Bride becoming an anime because it follows an episodic structure in which every chapter unearths more questions than it answers and continually raises the stakes. By the time the girls stopped squabbling over their beloved Ryuunosuke and got around to teaming up to save the world, this became a veritable page-turner. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is not already a harem fan, but I think it's one of the higher-quality offerings of the genre.