The Alchemist Who Survived Now Dreams of a Quiet City Life – Usata Nonohara

Charming, if a bit mindless. It’s a litRPG light novel, so the ‘mindless’ is hard to avoid: The tropes of fantasy roleplaying are the novel’s laws of nature. Most of the characters are two-dimensional. The book is plot-light. And too much of the book is devoted to telling us, in detail, how to make various potions.

Still charming and fun. Two hundred years ago, a disaster destroyed the city and cut the chain of transmission for alchemy, so it has been impossible to train new alchemists. Enter Mariela, a very-young alchemist whose suspended animation (accidentally) lasted two hundred years, and who is now trying to make a life for herself without revealing that she is an alchemist. (Being the only person capable of brewing magical potions may be hazardous to one’s freedom.) The Alchemist Who Etc. avoids the usual litRPG focus on monster-bashing and heroics, and is better for it.