Shingeki no Kyojin: Kakuzetsu Toshi no Joou
Attack on Titan: The Harsh Mistress of the City

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There are multiple Attack on Titan novels. Before the Fall offers an origin information for some of the technology and setting of the world. Kuklo Unbound offers unique situation of the protagonist that draws you in from the start. Lost Girls is of interest simply because it works with already established and favourite characters. So, what does The Harsh Mistress of the City have to offer? Not much really… is what I would say if I stopped at the first volume.

Let me start with what I thought about the first volume then. The title sounds intriguing, but I was soon disappointed that the titular ... mistress wasn’t a main character but rather just a side one with just a bunch of appearances, and that she isn’t some sort of high-ranking personnel that would give is new point of view of the society of AoT, but just another foot soldier basically. I felt like the story didn’t introduce the protagonist or the girl properly enough for me to care about them, nor they seemed to be developing in any interesting way. Then the best part of the volume came – the ending. By which I don’t mean that the best part was finally being done with it, but that the cliff-hanger at the end was very nicely done and hooked me into continuing.

The second part of this novel is where this story really stars. The titular girl is in a position that fits her title from the title more, and gets much more screentime. The story delves deeper into human conflict, leaving titans as a looming threat in background rather than the main antagonists. It nicely depicts the misguided well-meant efforts deformed by surroundings, and how the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The much needed character development is finally delivered. Concerning the writing style, this novel has quite nicely written action scenes that manage to deliver the punch as good as if this were a visual medium (this is true for the first volume too).

About the art, Range Murata’s illustrations are nice to look at as expected, especially drawings of the girls. Admittedly the covers played some role in me picking up this novel.

Overall, while this has a slow start, as a whole it is a worthy read.

Verdict: Hardskip on this one.

You probably are an Attack on Titan fan and are going through the franchise's spin-offs to find out more about the world surrounding the story. The Harsh Mistress of the City takes place right after Wall Maria was breached and the population is rushing to get behind Rose.
In this frenzy, a lot of people get left stranded outside the walls and the Quinta district becomes entirely cut off from the (now new) inside.
Rita, a young soldier, finds herself in the position of having the highest rank inside Quinta and the need to keep the population from devolving into an unruly mob.

The ... problem with this story is that on one hand, it adds absolutely nothing of interest to the world of Attack on Titan, and on the other hand, it skips all the parts that would have made a story like this interesting. Obviously from the title and synopsis, you can gauge that Rita becomes a strict, cruel leader but the story just glosses over her transformation. At the end of Volume 1 Rita still has a childish personality but at the start of Volume 2 there has been a 6 months time skip and she has become this harsh mistress. Not only is Rita, not the main protagonist of her own story but we also don't see her transformation which might have been the only thing that would have made this story interesting in the first place.

There's more mind-numbingly terrible stuff in this novel but the point above alone is enough to not ever read this novel.