Review: The Lapis Lazuli Crown

The Lapis Lazuli Crown 1 by Natsuna Kawase, 978-1-4012-2120-1
What do you know, there is shojo (girl manga) I can stand to read! This is the story of the middle daughter of an impoverished noble family who is, well, freakishly strong, a situation she is not happy with. In addition, her older sister is a genius sorceress, and her younger sister look to be the same, while Miel has trouble controlling the most basic spells. One day she literally runs into Prince Radian, who is going about town undercover after he gave his best friend/retainer the slip. She doesn't know who he is at first, and they get to know each other when she gives him a "tour" of the city. After his deception is revealed, he gifts her with a charm made from lapis lazuli, the royal stone, and tells her he'll wait for the day she can use the stone to cast spells (you can't work at the palace unless you can use lapis lazuli, which is a fragile stone). This actually motivates her to study magic harder, even transferring to a magic-oriented high school. I'm definitely hoping there are more issues forthcoming. I even enjoyed the secondary story, about a cat burglar saving his reputation by helping a girl targeted by his copycat (even though it took up about a third of the book).

I think what I like most was the lack of over-emoting, chibi characters. There were no cutesy talking pets, no overload of Japanese-style emotion faces (aside from Miel falling to her knees when overwhelmed a few too many times). There weren't any knock-down-drag-out duels that last for 50 pages (more a problem with shonen, I know). The magic system in the story is fairly straightforward, and the world seems fairly well-built (considering I only saw the cityscape, I could be wrong). The characters were well-drawn, and I could tell them apart, even in black-and-white. I could follow the flow of the action. There's supposed to be a concluding volume coming out this month--I'll be looking for it.