I've seen this manga floating around online for a while now (especially the cool volume 3 dragon cover caught my attention), and I was always disappointed that I wasn't able to read it without an official English or German release. But my sad days are over now, thanks to the English publisher Kodansha! It's a new series by the well-known mangaka Tsutomu Nihei (Blame!, Knights of Sidonia), but ultimately the first one that I'm checking out. The dungeon-crawling theme sounded right up my alley, but in the end it was a bit different from what I expected. The story is about a princess locked up in a tower full of monsters and the people that are sent to save her. There are soldiers and mages, and the main character and farmer boy Yuva is also there, I guess. They enter the tower, fight monsters and look for the missing princess. It's a fast story and not at all about exploring the dungeon level by level. They march up to the 50th floor very quickly where a new challenge awaits. Not that much has happened in this first volume, but I can't say that I disliked it. The characters were only ok so far, though. I don't really have an opinion on Yuva, but the female characters seem interesting. There's the military captain Minsabelle and the mage Lilicen, and I would like to learn more about them. But they were also very noticeably the only two characters that were depicted almost naked at times ... sigh. The art isn't my personal favorite either, but it works well with the architecture of the dungeon and with the gross monsters. All in all, I feel like this was really only the beginning of a story that could turn out to be very much to my liking. Volume 1 only covers the first two chapters so there is much more to come, and I see a lot of potential in this series. 3.5 stars.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Kodansha for providing a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

Yuva is a young farmer who happens to be very, very strong. Because of that he's chosen to to his village's sacrifice -- sent to help the Royal Guard in their efforts to rescue a princess from a floating tower 100 floors tall. There are politics, magic, fights, exploration, all the things you'd expect. The dungeon design is interesting and the monsters inside range from slime monsters to the undead, and -- of course -- a dragon.

It's a quick read, albeit one that ends on a cliffhanger. However, it's very one note with little time given to the characters themselves and more to the action scenes. There's a lot of personality and world building done just through the art, and I think this is a worthwhile read if you like dungeon exploration books, I just wanted the pace to slow down and give me a bit more time to get to know Yuva and the other knights, to get an idea of how politics and magic worked in this world.

Still, I'll be looking for volume 2. Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the ARC!