<Secrets of the Silent Witch, Vol. 4> - Better volume overall. I'm just starting to miss my murder hobo characters that won't let the villains escape for the millionth time. It's getting annoying. At this point, they have the same energy to me as a Saturday-morning cartoon villain.

Secrets of the Silent Witch, Vol. 4.5 - This .5 volume consists of a number of more slice-of-life-y episodes, but the author did a really exceptional job stringing them all together into an interconnected narrative set after the last volume. I would go so far as to say that this is now the prime example of how those .5 side story volumes should be done. And with the more lighthearted nature of the volume, it's more aligned with my tastes as well, which makes this my favorite volume so far.

<Peddler in Another World: I Can Go Back to My World Whenever I Want! Volume 10> - entertaining volume but very, very predictable up to even the tiniest story beat. 6/10

<Ascendance of a Bookworm: Hannelore’s Fourth Year at the Royal Academy> - Okay, I have thoughts. First off, the world-building, the prose, and the general quality are there. I am also very happy that this is a continuation of the timeline and not a jump back, so we get to learn what happened to beloved characters after the end of the main series. Very happy about this. Then there is something happening with Myne and Ferdinand off-screen, which makes me think that this can only be a setup for a new Myne POV volume somewhere down the line. Very, very happy about that. But this is where my happy thoughts end. The first good chunk of the book is about a girl who doesn't really know if she's in love or not, being forced to think about who she's going to marry by noble circumstances. And the internal and external struggles about her love life are the only thing going on for a good chunk of the volume. It's still written very well, and her emotional turmoil is very understandable and very human. The problem is that I don't care. At all. Not one bit. Maybe a fan of pure romance novels would be right at home here, but I found myself constantly stopping mid-chapter, and I spent more time doomscrolling or watching red-panda clips on YouTube than actually reading. I fell in love with Myne as a character because she steamrolled everything into doing her bidding and never backed down even an inch. Hannelore, on the other hand, is, for this first part of the book, the polar opposite, doing nothing other than backing down. Only at roughly the halfway point is there a (small) change in her, and she starts to act on her own desires. And at that point, it immediately started to enjoy the book a lot more. Not to the level of the main series, but at least I was able to finish it uninterrupted. Hannelore is just too considerate. Too nice. I don't think she can grow on me as the main character of this spin-off series. I hope I'm wrong, but if there won't be a change in her personality, I don't think it will happen. And then there is how the Dunkelfelgerians are written in this book. It's like they have become a caricature of their main story counterparts, with their features exaggerated into absurdity for comedic effect. The tone of Dunkelfelger feels so wrong for a Bookworm title, in my opinion.