The Fall 2024 Light Novel Guide

The World Bows Down Before My Flames

What's It About? 

Homura wants to set something, anything, on fire. She may finally get her chance when she's summoned to another world that's desperate enough to ask her for help! Along with a group of similarly offbeat high school girls who all have their own powers, Homura sets off to incinerate evildoers and rein in the chaos caused by the Demon Lord's resurrection. What's going to happen when she inevitably gets a little carried away? Will her flames of justice wind up burning down the whole world?

The World Bows Down Before My Flames is written by Sumeragi Hiyoko and features illustrations by Mika Pikazo and mocha. English translation by James Balzer. Published by Yen On (October 29, 2024).

Content Warning: suicide and bullying

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

For the first three-quarters of this book, I was ambivalent. The story and characters were fine, just not as new or exciting as I was hoping from a purported genre parody, and the illustrations, although nice and fanservice-y, aren't all that special. Then all of that changed in the finale, when we finally got to know what was going on with the ostensible main character Homura, and it makes me wish that we'd gotten there just a little bit sooner. Still, it's easy to see why first-time published novelist Hiyoko Sumeragi took their time. The World Bows Down Before My Flame opens with Homura and four other girls appearing in a strange, white space and being informed by a goddess that they've all died and been chosen to save the world she's in charge of. That's all well and good, but there's something a little…off about the girls. Homura hides a strange power in her eye, Saiko is quickly renamed Psycho once she starts talking, Jin is a lunatic ninja, and the last two girls, Tsutsumi and Proto, aren't even human. Although the goddess says she chose them for their special qualities, it's obvious that she either made a mistake or just grabbed the first five people who died at any given moment.

Homura spends most of the book trying to figure out what is going on in Japan that she didn't know about, while her companions wreak havoc in their new fantasy world. They're not just overpowered, they're weirdly powered, and Psycho, at least, is having a lot of fun with that, especially since her new ability is to heal herself to the point of reattaching limbs. In between the lunacy, though, we start to piece together Homura's back story, and that's where the book shines. The other parts are still funny, especially the joke about how there is some dark power in her eye, as chuuni characters often like to claim, but the truth about Homura's power and what happens when we finally learn about how she died and why, stole the show.

There is a warning for suicide that comes with this book, as well as bullying. They don't strike until close to the end although they're alluded to before that, and are important to the plot. Homura's ultimate realization is different from a lot of similarly tormented characters, and that's a major strength of the volume. I'm torn as to whether I'll pick up volume two, but I enjoy the conclusion that this book comes to. Sometimes, you don't just want to watch the world burn, you want to start the fire yourself.

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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. Yen Press, BookWalker Global, and J-Novel Club are subsidiaries of KWE.