Secrets of the Silent Witch Volume 3 Review

The Secrets of the Silent Witch anime adaptation has been and gone after a largely successful run. And now it’s back to the original light novels, as we continue to follow Monica’s adventures as she tries to protect Felix from those who wish to harm him. What will Volume 3 have in store? Let’s find out!

The school festival may be behind them, but now Monica has a new problem: her school is about to participate in a chess tournament, and she has been chosen as one of the representatives! To make matters worse, one of the schools taking part is Minerva’s, where Monica previously studied. Should she run into anyone she’s familiar with, her cover will absolutely be blown, but there’s no getting out of the tournament.

This is where we’re introduced to new character Bernie Jones, a noble attending Minerva and who used to be friends with Monica when she was at the school. Back then, Monica struggled with her classes and had no friends due to her shy nature and difficulty communicating with those around her. But Bernie wanted to help her, and the two became friends, at least up until Monica’s talent for magic quickly surpassed Bernie’s and his eagerness to help evolved into a dark jealousy. Now reunited for the tournament, what will Bernie do?

Ultimately, the chess tournament only takes up half of this volume, with the second half seeing Moncia attending a nearby festival with one of the other Seven Sages, Mary Harvey. There she runs into Felix, who is wandering around without a guard, but there’s also a powerful magical artefact on the loose that she needs to stop. And it’s this half of the book that ends up more memorable for me, perhaps reinforced by it being the end of the anime as well.

The issue with the chess tournament is that although author Matsuri Isora goes to the effort of telling some of it from Bernie’s perspective (which I did appreciate), it’s hard for us to feel sympathy for him. It’s easy to understand how he grew so jealous of Monica, but the way he treated her (and continues to treat her when they reunite) is horrible! And while there’s some effort to redeem him in the end, it didn’t leave me feeling like he deserved forgiveness.

I think the second half of the book better captures what has made Secrets of the Silent Witch so special. Monica and Felix are getting to spend time together one-on-one, slowly opening up to one another about the feelings they’ve kept hidden away. The two have more in common than they think, and I always relish the opportunity to see them not as prince and student council member, but simply as two people trying to find their place in the world. This is also just generally a much more interesting storyline than the chess tournament, which I feel could have been condensed down.

Still, despite feeling like this is what could have been two distinct books in one, it still proves an engaging read and offers plenty of development for the cast as well as the setting. Over the course of these first three volumes, Isora has consistently done well to balance the bigger mystery alongside the amount of character stories there are to delve into, and this instalment is no different. I certainly continue to look forward to seeing where Volume 4 will take us.

Secrets of the Silent Witch Volume 3 comes to the West thanks to Yen Press under their Yen On imprint and continues to be translated by Alice Prowse. Like with the previous two books, this reads well with no issues to note. Included as extras are several colour pages at the beginning with art by illustrator Nanna Fujimi.

Here in English, the next release from Yen Press is Volume 7, which was originally scheduled for November but has been pushed to December (although the UK date is listed as January). After that, there are no further main series volumes currently in the schedule, even though Japan is currently at 11 volumes. There is, however, Volume 2 of the Secrets of the Silent Witch: Another spin-off, which is currently listed for release in early February.

Overall, in some ways, this isn’t as strong as the first two books in the series, but the second half more than makes up for it. If you’ve been enjoying the series so far, there’s certainly nothing that will put you off; it’s just a shame the new character ended up being largely unlikable.

Our review copy from Yen Press was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.