The Fall 2023 Manga Guide

Soara and the House of Monsters

What's It About? 

Soara is a young orphan girl raised by knights and trained to fight against marauding monsters. By the time Soara is old enough to join the fray, her blade is no longer needed, as peace has been declared with monsters. Searching for a new calling, Soara stumbles upon Kirik the dwarf, Architect of the Monster World. Suddenly, instead of fighting monsters, Soara finds herself working alongside Kirik to build comfortable homes for monsterkind! In the course of her new career, will Soara find a home for herself?

Soara and the House of Monsters has a story and art by Hidenori Yamaji. The English translation is by Ben Trethewey, and the adaptation is by Krista Grandy, with lettering by Mercedes McGarry. Published by Seven Seas Entertainment (September 5, 2023).

Is It Worth Reading?

Christopher Farris

Rating:

Seeing a standby genre setting refreshed with some new, highly specific angle is often fun. Just glancing over the title and synopsis, you can make a pretty good guess as to the kind of manga Soara and the House of Monsters will be. Sure enough, it doesn't disappoint: You're getting highly-detailed diagrams of monster dwellings, loaded up with fun thought experiment solutions to fantastical problems. There is the frame of an overarching story here, as we follow the titular Soara's journey joining up with the dwarven architects, her personal growth regarding her attitude towards monsters, and something up involving the Demon Lord himself. But that's all very backseat to witnessing the planning and construction behind the various creature comforts, and the book is all the more distinguished for it.

There are a few oddities that hold House of Monsters back for me. For one thing, the creation of the dwellings is generally about demolishing the monsters' original home (or having it be destroyed prior) and then constructing a completely new one to fit their needs, as opposed to any attempt at renovating what's already there. It still ultimately delivers on the promises of showcasing the various imaginary accommodations but creates a disconnect in laying out the "Before" and "After" of the different homes. Speaking of disconnects, we may be familiar with the supernatural craftsmanship speed of dwarves, but a lot of what Kirik and the others get up to in putting these things together very much comes off as free actions within a very loosely defined time frame. Sure, they can scale an entire mountain and reactivate it as a volcano when it would take a houseful of goblins to nearly freeze to death.

It's all in the name of very functional fun, so if you can cotton to the story's particular priorities, it comes off as a perfectly charming series. Soara's backstory bits aren't as central as the architectural aspects, but the blunt point about the monster world treating her better than her experiences with humankind is appreciably salient. The real appeal is in how Hidenori Yamaji's hog-wild house designs sell the book by themselves, as they're supposed to. A beautiful amount of well-thought-out imagination is on display, rendered with a fantastical storybook flourish. It's an artistic indulgence that rings with the joy of making, which is centrally espoused by the story. And even with the more standard "plot" elements feeling secondary, the first volume still has me compelled to see where it goes next with the cliffhanger about how the crew will construct a place for an electrified werewolf/mermaid couple to live in. So, it must be doing something right.

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Soara and the House of Monsters is like Dragon Goes House-Hunting with a bigger heart. Rather than being from the perspective of the house hunter, it's told through the eyes of the architects who build them, and their main goal is to ensure that all monsters who hire them have cozy homes that serve their needs. So a slime needs a low-friction home, goblins need something dim but warm, and a thunder wolf married to a mermaid needs a house that allows them to coexist. And Soara? She needs an understanding that monsters are people, too, and that maybe what she's been missing all her life is a place to belong.

As with series like Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts, Soara and the House of Monsters is a parable about man's inhumanity to man and the way that prejudice can close your eyes to the essential things in life – namely, people who are different from you. Soara was orphaned early and raised by a group of soldiers to become a monster killer in the human/monster wars, and the heavy implication is that she was told that she owed it to them to be as effective a killer as she could be. They fed, clothed, and housed her, so she was beholden to them.

That's no way to raise a child or grow up, but Soara seems to have learned to push all doubts and dreams of a family to the side because, at least, she was getting food and shelter. But when the war ends just before she can join it, she finds herself at loose ends until she falls in with a band of dwarven architects, making all the difference. They barely care that she's human, and they take her in with no questions asked. Unlike the humans who raised her, the dwarves ask her to help, not demand it, and they don't put prices on anything. They even pay her, which seems to be more than the guys who trained her ever did. It's about understanding basic truths about living things and how we all need and want the same basic comforts. Hopefully, the mermaid/thunder wolf storyline resolution will help Soara understand that she can have love and family, too.

The story manages to convey all of this without being preachy, and honestly, its focus is more obviously on the houses that Kirik and his team design and build. The art is a triumph of fantasy building, and if it gets too obsessed with all of the details, that will probably thrill readers who aren't me. Fascinating, intricate, and heartwarming, this is a lovely story.