Pawn's Gambit

This is a separate story from book 1. Some of the characters return from there, like the actual protagonist, Yuu, the emperor who rules the country and some others, but other than that, it's a completely separate story. The things that have happened there are buildings blocks for the events here, but technically, you can just read this. I wouldn't recommend, though.

Yuu, after the death of the Iron Prince, gets recruited by a god. For the role of the ruler of heaven, they have a competition, where the gods all choose a hero and they have to find and collect hidden treasures offered up by the participating deities. She got picked by Natsuko, the goddess of lost things.

I think one of the weaknesses of this book is the fact it is not a proper sequel; both are short and I would have liked a longer time to connect with the characters and start caring about them. This is similar to the first one in the sense that we go from point A to point B, knowing that there will be some artefact with its special way of getting to it. What is different, though, is the fact that we are not building a team; characters come and go and other than Yuu, we only have Natsuko who sticks around the whole way, which gives us even less time to get fond of them.
What's more frustrating is that we don't even get to know what happened to them. They do their thing, they leave and that's about it.

I wouldn't say it was a bad book, it's fun and colourful enough, but the fact it's so short and almost a free-standing story makes it real hard to feel like you are that invested. I would have much preferred to see what's going on with Einrich. Or the others somehow coming back for vengeance. Or something!
That one also had a plot twist at the end that made me want to throw my Kindle at a wall. It was so shocking and just infuriating. Here it's... fine? First of all, I expected things, second, it wasn't all that bad. Nobody really got too emotional over it. Shit happens. You could see it coming.

All in all, this is a worthy read. Not my absolute favourite, but it's fine and it's worth a try if you want something short and easy that's not part of a million book series.