The Twelve Kingdoms, Book 1: Shadow of the Moon, Shadow of the Sea, Part 1

By: Fuyumi Ono

Narrated by: Grace Lynn Kung

The epic novel series that inspired a hit anime returns with an all-new translation! Experience a quest for survival and self-discovery as one girl finds herself lost in a strange, unknown world.

When high school student Youko Nakajima is approached by an enigmatic, blonde-haired stranger named Keiki, her life is turned upside down. Whisked away into the perilous world of the Twelve Kingdoms--a realm teeming with mythical beasts, ancient prophecies, and political intrigue--Youko finds herself alone and hunted. With danger at every corner, she must fight to survive, all while grappling with shocking revelations about her true identity that could shatter everything she thought she knew. Shadow of the Moon, Shadow of the Sea introduces listeners to a breathtaking fantasy world, where nations rise and fall, and destiny awaits those who dare to seize it!

©1992, 2012 Fuyumi Ono, Akihiro Yamada (P)2012 Fuyumi Ono, Akihiro Yamada

Great to finally be able to hear the books!

I'm a huge fan of The Twelve Kingdoms anime, so I was excited to see the books being added to the catalog. I started the book with a little trepidation. Not all light novels translate well for an American audience. But this was very good, and the reader did an excellent job! I just bought the second book to get part two of Yoko's first story arc. Yoko is my favorite character in the series, so I hope books five and six are added soon!

The start of one of the greatest character development stories and OG isekais

Okay. Truthfully, I gave this a high rating purely to boost chances of getting the rest recorded as well because it is absolutely one of my all-time favorite novels, but I have a few issues with this adaptation, though I still recommend giving it a listen yourself.

First of all, this is only HALF of the actual novel, and whoever made the decision to split it should be ashamed, because it means this audio “book” (it should really be called an audio “excerpt”) has NO payoff, and ends on the literal lowest point of the actual full novel. Did they honestly think doing that would encourage people who aren’t familiar with the story to continue with the series?! (If you aren’t, please do, I promise it’s worth it) absolute trash decision on somebody’s part.

Second of all, and this one is super subjective, but the narrator’s performance is kind of hit or miss for me. Her general narration and main character voice are excellent, but some of her choices for the other characters just didn’t hit the ear well. A couple of them sound weirdly stilted and dialogue sometimes has extremely awkward emphases in the sentences, not where I’d expect them to be if someone were speaking naturally. I get that it’s probably really hard to do voices for characters who have been voiced elsewhere since folks familiar with both adaptations will come in with pre-conceived notions of how characters sound, but this applies even to characters who aren’t in other versions, like some of the chatter between students.

It’s not the best audio performance, IMO, but it’s solid enough to be worth a listen, and the story itself is extremely well-written, so in the end, I’d still recommend giving it a try.

It’s only half

The novel was originally released in the early 2000’s and it’s a great series but unfortunately the people who bought the rights then only published 4 of the 7 novels due to the anime only covering the first four novels…. Now years later sevenseas picked it up and to make more profit they decided to split the novels up into vol. so yeah in the 1 part it’s all bad stuff happening to her and there is no solution cause it’s literally half the novel maybe even a third of the original novel. The anime is still available on crunchy roll and it has a dub if you are interested just be advised that they added two completely unnecessary characters so if you ignore them it’s actually a pretty good adaptation and a great story obviously the novels are better but since only part one is out… you can at least see where it’s going to see if you want to continue with the series.