Amalgam Hound: Criminal Investigation Bureau – Special Investigation Unit Volume 1 Review
Crime drama is a genre underserved by light novels, at least here in the Western market. If it ain’t an isekai it won’t sell, we’re reliably told (and witness when publishers do branch out), but despite that, we’re still treated to something different occasionally. Today I’m here to take a look at the first volume of Amalgam Hound, a fantasy/sci-fi series that follows a police detective. Will it impress? Let’s find out!
The story centres around the protagonist 28-year-old Theo Starling, who previously served in the military and watched many of his fellow combatants and loved ones lose their lives in the war. Now the country of Adastrah has enjoyed a year of peace, thanks to ceasefire agreements with its neighbours, but while the residents rest easy, Theo is haunted by the loss of his family and the horrific events he went through in the war.
Currently, Theo is working as a detective with the Criminal Investigations Bureau, taking on all kinds of cases with his co-workers Tobias Hillmyna and Emma Canary (who works with magic as a sorcerer). When we meet the group, they’ve been told to form a task force to investigate a case of Amalgams going rogue and causing chaos in the underworld. In this world, Amalgams are tactical and powerful weapons developed for use in the war. In the wrong hands they could hurt millions, so not only do the team need to hunt down the rogue units but they also need to figure out how anyone got their hands on them in the first place.
Having lost his family to an Amalgam attack, Theo in particular has a lot of hatred for the weapons. Unfortunately for him, in this case, his group is assigned a new team member in the form of Eleven: a highly intelligent Amalgam known as a Hound who has taken the form of a young woman. As indicated by the name, Eleven is only the 11th of her kind and is just as deadly as a regular Amalgam but now coupled with human-level intelligence. Theo is left in charge of how to best use her in the investigation, which it’s fair to say he’s not thrilled by, but ultimately reluctantly allows her to tag along to help them solve the case. After all, when it comes to Amalgams, surely a fellow Amalgam is going to be best placed to get to the bottom of what’s going on?
Amalgam Hound is quite similar to a series like Your Forma, not only because of the human/not-human buddy-cop pairing but because our protagonist has been through a lot. Author Midori Komai doesn’t shy away from depicting Theo’s PTSD and the complex emotions stemming from it, particularly now he’s faced with Eleven. It’s refreshing to see a story where the trauma and survivor’s guilt isn’t just justification for why a character acts a certain way but is instead properly explored during the run of the book. Of course, there’s a lot more going on than the relationship between these two characters and Komai skilfully depicts the mystery element of the story too.
It’s a dark story, with a surprising amount of gore at points, but it’s consistently very well written in a way that’s compelling and keeps you turning the pages. It’s one of those cases where the reader is given all the pieces to find the answer themselves, but it’s not obvious right from the start so it feels like as Theo investigates you’re slowly being given all the necessary information. I was quite surprised to find that this was Komai’s first published work since the level of polish here is impressive.
Unfortunately, it’s not flawless and I do have some criticisms. One is that we’re told at the beginning of the story that Adastrah is a country where science and magic developed side by side, but magic only plays a tiny part in the story. Despite Emma being a sorcerer, we don’t see her use magic that often and the rest of the story from the crime they’re investigating to the Amalgams as a concept are far more befitting of a sci-fi novel. It felt like we didn’t need magic in this setting at all and, given the attention to detail elsewhere in this novel, I was quite surprised it fell to the wayside. What was the point of it? Maybe Volume 2 will answer that question.
My other issue is that toward the climax, Emma and Tobias split up from Theo and Eleven, which is fine except for the fact they’re more or less absent after that. This is a shame because I ended up feeling like Tobias was only there to be Theo’s senior and Emma was the token female character to dote on Eleven. Of course, there’s more to their characters than that, but because they take a backseat it felt like such a waste of their talents and left me wondering why the author went to the effort of making a four-man team if it was going to end like this. Emma in particular is such a waste given her unique role as the magic user.
Still, neither of these issues is enough for me to say you shouldn’t read this book. I highly encourage you to pick it up if you like sci-fi, buddy cop or police procedurals. It’s no understatement to say this is one of my favourite first volumes I’ve read all year (maybe not more than Agents of the Four Seasons, but certainly second to that). I was left very impressed by the strength of the writing and eager to see what Komai will have in store for us next.
The first volume of Amalgam Hound comes to the West thanks to Yen Press under the Yen On imprint and has been translated by Jocelyne Allen, who delivers a wonderful translation. This release includes colour pages by illustrator Domino Ozaki which offer character profiles for our main cast and a scene of them working hard in the office.
Looking at the Japanese releases, both Volumes 1 and 2 came out in 2022 with no sign of further instalments, so I suspect this one is either axed or simply wrapped up early. Here in English Yen Press has #2 scheduled for release in September and their synopsis talks about Theo and the team infiltrating a luxury cruise ship for their latest investigation, which sounds quite interesting! Provided it doesn’t end in a cliffhanger of any kind, I can’t see Volume 2 being an unsatisfying endpoint, given how self-contained Volume 1 is.
Overall, Amalgam Hound is like a breath of fresh air for the light novel market as it offers us something quite different, but more than that, this is an impressive first instalment in its own right. If you like the sound of the synopsis, I highly encourage you to give this a chance.
Our review copy from Yen Press was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.
