Divine Incursions Volume 1 Review

Amidst the fantasy and isekai light novels, Yen Press have quite a few supernatural mystery titles under their Yen On imprint now. The latest is Divine Incursions by Oumi Kifuru, which follows two government agents as they investigate mysteries related to gods. Does it impress? Let’s find out!

The story takes place in Japan, where our protagonist, Katagishi and his partner, Miyagi, work for a secret government organisation tasked with investigating supernatural incidents. These usually involve gods and the humans who worship them. The first case takes the pair to a village where, once a year, a giant body part drops from the sky. The residents believe it to be part of the god that watches over them, but why does it descend in pieces like this? Katagishi and Miyagi talk to the residents and try to get to the bottom of things, but as they learn more, they quickly realise the residents may have caused the problem themselves.

We see a lot of different stories in this first volume, with gods that offer protection to those who worship them. Such as a village where the residents all have a smile on their faces when they die or get severely injured (thanks to a ‘mermaid’s dream’), or a village where the residents lose all of their organs upon death. There are some good old-fashioned cultist groups, too! Usually, the actual history of the god’s actions or worship has become twisted as it’s been passed down through generations. Generally, it’s hard to have sympathy for anyone except Katagishi and Miyagi, who have to bear witness to the truth because everyone else has brought this upon themselves. The gods are simple beings; they don’t discriminate, they just act in accordance with those who worship them…

A key point of the story is that Katagishi and Miyagi are only sent to investigate, they’re not tasked with resolving anything. It’s simply their job to report back on their findings, and then someone above them will take action if deemed necessary. This does pose an issue for readers early on because each case is relatively short (there are 8 overall within the 234 pages), and because it’s not their job to do anything else, I often felt like the endings were underwhelming. There wasn’t a proper sense of a resolution, especially as they often weren’t even referenced in passing later.

This gets better later in the book when the investigations become more personal. We’re not exactly sure what Miyagi’s backstory is in Volume 1, but we do learn a lot about Katagishi. He’s searching for his wife, Misaki, who went missing several years prior to the beginning of the novel. He doesn’t know for sure, but he suspects it might be connected to something supernatural. His brother-in-law, Rokuhara, also happens to be his superior and while Katagishi isn’t a fan of the man, he does at least know that Rokuhara also has a vested interest in getting to the bottom of his sister’s disappearance. Towards the end of this volume, we see two cases that are both related to Misaki’s family and her disappearance, and these have a better pay-off since they do ultimately tie up their stories.

On the whole, I think the episodic storytelling worked well for what the author was aiming for. This is a supernatural mystery series with a sprinkling of horror; the tales can be both quite graphic and extremely creepy. I don’t think that tone and atmosphere would have worked if it were spread out over a larger storyline that took up a whole book on its own. I also quite enjoyed the contrast between the very ordinary government officials who are our duo and the incidents they end up investigating. They have no supernatural powers of their own and often fear for their lives on the job, yet they don’t want to turn away from the truth or the nature of their job. There are some good jokes about how they’re working on the taxpayers’ dime and what’s expected of them because of it, too.

As mentioned, Divine Incursions Volume 1 comes to the West thanks to Yen Press under their Yen On imprint and has been translated by James Balzer. The release reads well, though I would have appreciated some translation notes at the end, as there are some interesting choices in the terminology. This is out of curiosity rather than an issue, but for example, the divine beings are largely referred to as ‘gods’, but occasionally it was left as the Japanese word ‘kami’, perhaps for emphasis or extra nuance. This happened for a couple of other terms as well. There are no extras to speak of here since there are no illustrations, so no opportunity for colour pages or anything. Yen Press have also released the first volume of the manga adaptation for those looking for a different take on the story.

The series looks to be ongoing, with four volumes currently available in Japan. Here in English, our next release will be #2 in May, and according to the synopsis takes place twenty years before Katagishi and Miyaki became investigators, so we’ll have a whole new cast of characters to contend with!

Overall, Divine Incursions’ first volume gets off to a slow start but becomes more engrossing as time goes on. I wasn’t sure I’d want to carry on at first, but now I’m keen to read the second book. If you’re a fan of supernatural-based mysteries, then this is well worth a look. It’s imperfect, but it’s trying to do something interesting and that more or less pays off over time.

Our review copy was supplied by the publisher Yen Press