Spice & Wolf, Vol. 7: Side Colors by Isuna Hasekura
Series Name: Spice & Wolf (Light Novel)
Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Romance, Commerce
Intended Age Group: 15+
Publisher: Yen On/Yen Press
Edition: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-316-22912-8
Rating: 3/5
Amazon Barnes&Noble RightStuf ThriftBooks
Description from the Book
In a break from Lawrence and Holo’s ongoing adventures, author Isuna Hasekura presents Side Colors, a series of short vignettes focusing on the series’ favorite characters.
Personal & Info
There are three short stories in this volume, so I will be breaking them up into their own sections for the review. I will post the overall rating in the usual place above, but the individual story ratings will go in this section.
The Boy and the Girl and the White Flowers: 2/5
The Red of the Apple, The Blue of the Sky: 3/5
Wolf and Amber Melancholy: 4/5
Characters
Holo is in all three stories.
Lawrence is in the second and third short stories.
Aryes Belange, which I assume is pronounced as Aries, is a religious girl with little to no knowledge of the world outside her house. I mean this to the extreme. She doesn’t even know flowers normally grow from the ground. Aryes is in the first and longest story, The Boy and the Girl and the White Flowers.
Klass is a boy younger than Aryes. He worked in the estate that housed Aryes. Klass is also in The Boy and the Girl and the White Flowers.
Norah is the shepherdess from volume two. She is in the third story, Wolf and Amber Melancholy.
Story & Thoughts
The Boy and the Girl and the White Flowers
Klass and Aryes, two children of varying ages, were living in an estate out in the middle of nowhere. Klass worked there and slept in the barn. Aryes was basically sequestered away in a building all by herself. Her situation so unusual to the staff that she was always the gossip of the place.
The lord owning the estate supposedly died, and some relative, I think his brother, came to stake his claim of the property. He evicted anyone he considered unnecessary, including Klass and Aryes. Hardly any traveling supplies were given, so the evicted were essentially doomed to struggle to survive or die on the road.
The story starts with Klass and Aryes, maybe two days travel from the estate, and proceeds to cover a portion of their journey. Of course, being part of Spice & Wolf, they end up meeting Holo at some point.
I don’t like this story much. To me, it just comes off as Holo being mean to a young boy for one hundred and twenty pages. She spends the entire story teasing, bullying, and pranking Klass for her own amusement. Her prank went so overboard it could be considered cruel.
We only get to see Klass’ perspective, though, so we don’t get an accurate idea of how Holo treats Aryes. It seems like she’s nothing but nice to her, but with how ignorant Aryes is of everything, we can’t possibly know what kinds of things Holo tells her. Especially since the two of them are always speaking where and when Klass can’t hear them.
The story is definitely not flattering for Holo. There are a few instances in the series where I feel she has been particularly cruel, and this is definitely one of them. Sometimes I just really don’t like her at all.
The Red of the Apple, The Blue of the Sky
This story seems to take place after volume one, but before volume two. Lawrence and Holo appear to still be in Pazzio, and for some reason Lawrence wants them to burn through as much money as possible. I don’t know why, and I didn’t see an explanation for it anywhere.
The plot primarily focuses on that, but at the same time, they are buying clothes for Holo. Lawrence explains a relations tactic regarding buying and selling clothing. The story is only about thirty pages, so it’s short, but I like it much better than the first one. Holo is not nearly as mean in this one as she is in the first one.
Wolf and Amber Melancholy
This is a short story from Holo’s perspective. It takes place after the events of volume two. Holo takes ill, and Lawrence must take care of her. While she is sick, Holo struggles with possessive thoughts regarding Lawrence due to jealousy of his friendly relationship with the shepherdess Norah.
I like this story. It’s interesting to see how things work on Holo’s sides of the conversations. She might not seem so mean if we saw her side more often. It is unfortunate that a lot of her side is hiding her feelings and manipulation, but it explains a lot about how she acts and why.
Overall
Generally speaking, I like this volume. There are things I like, and things I don’t. I think the first story makes Holo look bad, but the third story significantly makes up for that in my opinion. The Red of the Apple, The Blue of the Sky is okay, but I don’t see anything special about it. Wolf and Amber Melancholy is my favorite of the three. I think it gives significant insight into how Holo thinks, since it’s the only part in the series so far that covers anything in her perspective.