Well this certainly was a short one. Barely 200 pages. Anyway, this light novel essentially only contains one story. Keith gets kidnapped by his bitter brother and Katarina, Maria, Jeord, Larna (another prince's fiance) and Sora (bad guy from previous book with new name) go off to find him.
This one has a lot of Jeord in it since he's traveling with Katarina, and i have to say....of all the love interests i like him the least, so seeing him constantly flirt with her was really not my cup of tea. They pick up what appears to be two cute new characters in this one, a magical teddy bear and a dark magic puppy. interesting choice to have mascot characters show up at this point. not sure if they're going to overstay their welcome or not, but we'll see.
As it is, in the previous volumes, Katarina's doofiness basically resulted in her solving all the issues peacefully, like with Rafael and Sora. This one however...without spoiling too much..just kind of is fixed by the end. Like, very anticlimactically and it left me with a very...meh. feeling.
She's still incredibly doofy but we know by the end of this novel at least 2 of the love interests have confessed to her, so there's that at least. Slowly but surely her harem is confessing so she won't have the "oh i had no idea" excuse anymore.
I do have to say though, normally in a harem anime, you can point a million miles away, like from episode or chapter one who she's going to end up with. But this is the first time in a LONG TIME i honestly couldn't tell you who Katarina is going to end up with. Like, i mean She IS engaged to Jeord, but that means nothing in the context of this story as she's been engaged to him since they were like 8 years old and it was an engagement of convenience.
I know light novels can't really be considered filler....but of the four volumes, this one is definitely the most...fillery feeling. Like in volume 3, Katarina got kidnapped, so in volume 4, her brother gets kidnapped? seems a little rinsey-repeat to me. Not only that, but not even all the main cast gets to go on the trip. Of the original main cast of season one, only Jeord and Maria get to go while the other two are relatively new.
The only thing i can say positive about this book is i AM glad it focused on Keith since I do enjoy Keith as a character. Here's hoping volume five will be better. Because four was.....fine? I suppose? nothing to write home about like volumes 1 and 2.
3.5 out of 5 rounded down to a 3.