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ムシシリーズ #6
愛の在り処をさがせ！
「愛情を期待されるのは迷惑だ。私には、お前の心は必要ない」
ハイクラスの身ながら短命な性モザイクで生まれたナミアゲハ出身の葵は、十八年間空気のように扱われて生きてきた。生きている間に、せめて誰かに必要とされたいと、性モザイクを探していたケルドア公国の大公との縁談を受けることにした葵だったが、葵の役割は、絶滅危機にあるグーティ・サファイア・オーナメンタル・タランチュラの最後の一人、美しくも冷徹な大公シモンと月に七日交わり、跡継ぎをつくることだった。できなければ離縁されると知り、その過酷な条件に心を痛める葵だったが―。
愛と孤独に思い惑う……擬人化チックファンタジー!
ハイクラスの身ながら短命な性モザイクで生まれたナミアゲハ出身の葵は、十八年間空気のように扱われて生きてきた。生きている間に、せめて誰かに必要とされたいと、性モザイクを探していたケルドア公国の大公との縁談を受けることにした葵だったが、葵の役割は、絶滅危機にあるグーティ・サファイア・オーナメンタル・タランチュラの最後の一人、美しくも冷徹な大公シモンと月に七日交わり、跡継ぎをつくることだった。できなければ離縁されると知り、その過酷な条件に心を痛める葵だったが―。
愛と孤独に思い惑う……擬人化チックファンタジー!
- GenresJapanese Literature
393 pages, Paperback
First published November 19, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 10, 2017
that's right. i give this book a 5/5. i honestly have no complaints. it was beautiful. it was depressing. it was... depressing. it was... really depressing. but i got mpreg, a frickin' child, a crapload of angst, adorable af moments, and yet, plenty of times where i want to cry out like a baby. A BABY.
i came into this not really knowing what to expect and yet, i ended up having my mind blown from the prologue ALONE. i ranted about this all over my tumblr and managed to get some people into this (yeeeah, join me in this pain) BUT a brief summary in what this volume is about:
(i always say "brief" but let's be furreal, i always end up writing a thesis or something...)
like volumes 4-5, this is another high class x high class story. the prologue starts out with aoi's painful experience during labor. he's not only alone, he FEELS alone. he feels completely alone and hurt, and yet he is giving birth to a baby. years later, his child, sora, is 4 years old, and he's exhausted both mentally and physically raising sora alone. sora is his life, and he would die for sora's sake. regardless though, he's depressed. hurt. alone. and these feelings won't go away. why does he feel so dark? why is he a single parent? what happened to the father? why is he trying so hard to hide sora? more than half of the book answer these questions and tells the story of aoi and shimon 5 years ago: how they met, the difficult experiences they had to go through - with each other and with the people around them- and their separation. the later half takes off right from where the prologue left off.
just like tsubasa from book 1, aoi is a gender mosaic (meaning he has two genders; he was primarily born a male but during puberty, his hormones will shift to that of a female and therefore, making him capable of getting pregnant). what makes him unique is that he's a high class citrus swallowtail with two different eye colors - blue on one eye, and orange/yellow-ish on the other. which is rare for a male because only females can have odd colored eyes. normally you can't tell if someone is gender mosaic unless they've reach a certain point after puberty where their hormones have started to shift to a female and their wings show patterns for both genders. but with aoi, you can tell something's up just by looking at his eyes. and because he's gender mosaic, he's prone to weakness, illness, and a short lifespan. not wanting to be bothered by this, everyone pretty much ignores him. his 15 siblings, his mother, his classmates, his teachers, etc. aoi grew up in solitude, even though he's constantly searching for company.
aoi is the kind of person that YEARNS for love. he wants to be loved. he wants to love to get rid of his loneliness. when he was 16 years old, he made the decision to stop taking these strong pills to repress his estrogen levels and instead, allow his body to transition to that of a woman (internally, and well, down there) so that he can get pregnant.
he wants a child so he can love, and be loved. he wants a family, so he can love and be loved. and he's willing to go to extra lengths to achieve this. he decides, when he was 18 years old, to move to europe to be part of a marriage arrangement where he is to give the archduke (a person he has never met before) a child heir. if he doesn't get pregnant within the 2 year limit, the marriage engagement is off, and he is to return back to his home country.
the 26 year old duke is named shimon, and he is the last male descendent of the goutei sapphire oriental tarantula. he was pressured to have a child heir since he was 14 years old so the monarchial system could continue in the country. however, it's almost like his family is cursed. he is the sole survivor of the goutei male line, where his 13 older brothers all passed away before or after reaching 3 years old (he has a younger brother, named teo, but everyone in the country pretends he doesn't exist - including his mother - because he is not the revered and highly looked upon goutei tarantula that this country pretty much worships). shimon manages to out-live his siblings but now holds the incredible stress of preserving his family line and maintaining the country's control and traditions when his kind is at the brink of extinction. he slept with 28 people before aoi, and yet, can't seem to get any of his partners pregnant (hence why he decided to recruit a possible marriage partner from abroad). he has a mentally ill mother, and she causes great conflict throughout the first half of the book. she's... she's... just a lot of things. she's. ugh.
both shimon and aoi don't really know what love is. aoi wants love just so he can get rid of his loneliness, and is willing to work with anyone and do almost anything to have that happen. shimon is very rational and robot-like and only does and thinks about things that are efficient. he thinks in terms of, what will bring the country the greatest prosperity and least losses? to him, love has no meaning because it can't solve the problems of the country. if there's no true, efficient, purpose to the action, then shimon simply won't do it. kissing during sex? nonsense, kissing doesn't bring about a child. so you have two, vastly different personalities in play here, but at the same time, because of their past, they also have things in common with each other.
like misao said in the after thoughts in the end, there's no romance in this volume. there's love, but it's in the form of pain and sacrifice. sure, there are moments where the dark clouds above have partly faded away to let some sunshine through, but overall, it's a surprisingly melancholic book. whenever i wished for things to get better - it didn't. and it continued to stay that way until the very end.
which is why misao continued this story in volume 7, because really. let's be furreal. this volume was just depressing as i don't even. even more so than volume 4, and that was a dark volume.
sumiya and tsubasa (and kakeru!!!) from the previous volumes show up. teo (shimon's little brother) and sora are absolutely adorable and managed to give this generally sad story a bit of LIGHT and SUNSHINE (like omg) from time to time. also, fritz is one cool af doctor, i totally dig his character.
anyways. you probably can read this without reading the previous 5 volumes BUT i would recommend you read volume 1 before reading this, just so you can be familiar with tsubasa and sumiya, and gender mosaic people in general.
if i had to rate books 1-6 all over again, it would be 4 > 6 (it's too painful to rate it as #1, sob) > 3 > 5 > 2 > 1. but i love all the volumes, so.....
anyways, great pacing, emotional, it's. ugh. i'm still emotional..... well, until volume 7!
i came into this not really knowing what to expect and yet, i ended up having my mind blown from the prologue ALONE. i ranted about this all over my tumblr and managed to get some people into this (yeeeah, join me in this pain) BUT a brief summary in what this volume is about:
(i always say "brief" but let's be furreal, i always end up writing a thesis or something...)
like volumes 4-5, this is another high class x high class story. the prologue starts out with aoi's painful experience during labor. he's not only alone, he FEELS alone. he feels completely alone and hurt, and yet he is giving birth to a baby. years later, his child, sora, is 4 years old, and he's exhausted both mentally and physically raising sora alone. sora is his life, and he would die for sora's sake. regardless though, he's depressed. hurt. alone. and these feelings won't go away. why does he feel so dark? why is he a single parent? what happened to the father? why is he trying so hard to hide sora? more than half of the book answer these questions and tells the story of aoi and shimon 5 years ago: how they met, the difficult experiences they had to go through - with each other and with the people around them- and their separation. the later half takes off right from where the prologue left off.
just like tsubasa from book 1, aoi is a gender mosaic (meaning he has two genders; he was primarily born a male but during puberty, his hormones will shift to that of a female and therefore, making him capable of getting pregnant). what makes him unique is that he's a high class citrus swallowtail with two different eye colors - blue on one eye, and orange/yellow-ish on the other. which is rare for a male because only females can have odd colored eyes. normally you can't tell if someone is gender mosaic unless they've reach a certain point after puberty where their hormones have started to shift to a female and their wings show patterns for both genders. but with aoi, you can tell something's up just by looking at his eyes. and because he's gender mosaic, he's prone to weakness, illness, and a short lifespan. not wanting to be bothered by this, everyone pretty much ignores him. his 15 siblings, his mother, his classmates, his teachers, etc. aoi grew up in solitude, even though he's constantly searching for company.
aoi is the kind of person that YEARNS for love. he wants to be loved. he wants to love to get rid of his loneliness. when he was 16 years old, he made the decision to stop taking these strong pills to repress his estrogen levels and instead, allow his body to transition to that of a woman (internally, and well, down there) so that he can get pregnant.
he wants a child so he can love, and be loved. he wants a family, so he can love and be loved. and he's willing to go to extra lengths to achieve this. he decides, when he was 18 years old, to move to europe to be part of a marriage arrangement where he is to give the archduke (a person he has never met before) a child heir. if he doesn't get pregnant within the 2 year limit, the marriage engagement is off, and he is to return back to his home country.
the 26 year old duke is named shimon, and he is the last male descendent of the goutei sapphire oriental tarantula. he was pressured to have a child heir since he was 14 years old so the monarchial system could continue in the country. however, it's almost like his family is cursed. he is the sole survivor of the goutei male line, where his 13 older brothers all passed away before or after reaching 3 years old (he has a younger brother, named teo, but everyone in the country pretends he doesn't exist - including his mother - because he is not the revered and highly looked upon goutei tarantula that this country pretty much worships). shimon manages to out-live his siblings but now holds the incredible stress of preserving his family line and maintaining the country's control and traditions when his kind is at the brink of extinction. he slept with 28 people before aoi, and yet, can't seem to get any of his partners pregnant (hence why he decided to recruit a possible marriage partner from abroad). he has a mentally ill mother, and she causes great conflict throughout the first half of the book. she's... she's... just a lot of things. she's. ugh.
both shimon and aoi don't really know what love is. aoi wants love just so he can get rid of his loneliness, and is willing to work with anyone and do almost anything to have that happen. shimon is very rational and robot-like and only does and thinks about things that are efficient. he thinks in terms of, what will bring the country the greatest prosperity and least losses? to him, love has no meaning because it can't solve the problems of the country. if there's no true, efficient, purpose to the action, then shimon simply won't do it. kissing during sex? nonsense, kissing doesn't bring about a child. so you have two, vastly different personalities in play here, but at the same time, because of their past, they also have things in common with each other.
like misao said in the after thoughts in the end, there's no romance in this volume. there's love, but it's in the form of pain and sacrifice. sure, there are moments where the dark clouds above have partly faded away to let some sunshine through, but overall, it's a surprisingly melancholic book. whenever i wished for things to get better - it didn't. and it continued to stay that way until the very end.
which is why misao continued this story in volume 7, because really. let's be furreal. this volume was just depressing as i don't even. even more so than volume 4, and that was a dark volume.
sumiya and tsubasa (and kakeru!!!) from the previous volumes show up. teo (shimon's little brother) and sora are absolutely adorable and managed to give this generally sad story a bit of LIGHT and SUNSHINE (like omg) from time to time. also, fritz is one cool af doctor, i totally dig his character.
anyways. you probably can read this without reading the previous 5 volumes BUT i would recommend you read volume 1 before reading this, just so you can be familiar with tsubasa and sumiya, and gender mosaic people in general.
if i had to rate books 1-6 all over again, it would be 4 > 6 (it's too painful to rate it as #1, sob) > 3 > 5 > 2 > 1. but i love all the volumes, so.....
anyways, great pacing, emotional, it's. ugh. i'm still emotional..... well, until volume 7!
October 8, 2024
It’s a secret pregnancy trope, one of my favorite tropes. MC1 is gender mosaic, which basically means he can get pregnant and the child will always inherit the father’s origin species, while MC2 is the grand duke of a small European country and the last person in the world whose origin species is peacock tarantula (also a critically endangered species that doesn’t exist beyond a forest whose size is less than 100 sq km in India). The story spends a lot of pages on dissecting what love really is. Is loving a person so you can be loved back and no longer lonely, really love? Is, having a child and loving them so you can be the mother that you wish you had but never had, really love? The child from the secret pregnancy is so precociously tolerant and understanding while being raised by a struggling single mom is definitely a highlight in this book. If the part about how the father found out about the existence of his child is not so ridiculously coincidental, this book would have been perfect.
November 27, 2016
I admit I was a bit disappointed that this wasn't Maya's story, but considering I really liked this couple and because the author mentioned in the afterword the next volume might very well be about Maya, it's okay.
This series is rather ridiculous, and god knows any kind of mpreg setting didn't used to be my thing, but I'm for some reason fine when it comes to these books. I think it's because she's so obviously having unashamedly fun writing this. It does feel self-indulgent, but in this case it works. It's like this wonderful soap opera, with gay insect people. What's not to love?
This series is rather ridiculous, and god knows any kind of mpreg setting didn't used to be my thing, but I'm for some reason fine when it comes to these books. I think it's because she's so obviously having unashamedly fun writing this. It does feel self-indulgent, but in this case it works. It's like this wonderful soap opera, with gay insect people. What's not to love?
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews