Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls in A Dungeon? Volumes 9 and 10 Light Novel Review

Volumes 9 and 10 are more or less one story so I’m reviewing them together. That means there will be spoilers for the end of volume 9 in this review.

Previous reviews for Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls in A Dungeon can be found here.

Review:

Volumes 9 and 10 plunge us back into the dungeon at first but with a slight difference on what we have seen before. These volumes are actually looking at explaining a bit more about the odd nature of the dungeon and we meet some new and interesting inhabitants as well as coming across another slightly undesirable familiar.

Yes, Bell is back in the thick of things, rescuing a monster who kind of looks like a girl and can speak. Initially taking her from the dungeon to protect her from those hunting her, trouble brews on the surface and soon, with new allies, Bell is forced to return her below and with that they are plunged into yet more trouble. I’m not going to talk to much about what happens in specifics because I really feel any real details that I give you are just going to take away from the experience of reading this story.

For someone who has always wanted to be a hero, Bell is faced with some really tough decisions in these volumes and while you might feel his rescue the damsel in distress thing is well established, the difficulty in choosing to extend a helping hand to an inhabitant of the dungeon isn’t overlooked here. It is made the centre-piece of a fairly tragic series of events that forces Bell to turn his back on even Aiz, his ideal, in order to protect who he believes he needs to be (and it will be very interesting to see the ramifications of that in future volumes).

As such, the journey these two volumes take us on are a little more emotionally wrought than previous ones. The light hearted banter, the oddly placed fan-service, and even the over-the-top heroics of the previous volumes have kind of taken a back seat as we see the truly dirty reality where doing what is right is not an easy choice and what is right is something that is difficult to ascertain.

While Bell’s familia stand by him through the mess, much is lost and those that were becoming his friends now see him in a different light. Despite everything Bell accomplishes in these volumes, and he does accomplish a lot and overcomes some really huge challenges, the cost is almost heart-breaking.

That said, it isn’t as though these volumes just plunge us into a downer for the sake of it, and as we learn more about their gods and their plans we can already see that there is a light awaiting us in future stories. The question is, will things get worse before they get better?

I really do recommend these two volumes (though read them together because volume 9 will just kind of leave you wondering what all that set-up was for that didn’t quite deliver anything). There’s some great characters introduced, a large showing of the support cast, some truly amazing battles, and a villain that seems really worth taking down. Bell is at his absolute best here as he really is forced to step up and not go with the flow.

I really had fun with these and I’d love to know your thoughts on them if you’ve read them.

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If you’re interested in reading Is It Wrong to Try To Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon Volume 9 or Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon Volume 10 they are available on the Book Depository.

• Is It Wrong to Try To Pick Up Girls in A Dungeon Volume 1
• Is It Wrong to Try To Pick Up Girls in A Dungeon Volume 2
• Is It Wrong to Try To Pick Up Girls in A Dungeon Volume 3
• Is It Wrong to Try To Pick Up Girls in A Dungeon Volume 4
• Is It Wrong to Try To Pick Up Girls in A Dungeon Volume 5
• Is It Wrong to Try To Pick Up Girls in A Dungeon Volume 6
• Is It Wrong to Try To Pick Up Girls in A Dungeon Volume 7
• Is It Wrong to Try To Pick Up Girls in A Dungeon Volume 8
• Is It Wrong to Try To Pick Up Girls in A Dungeon Volume 9 + 10
• Is it Wrong to Try To Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon Volume 11