Being a huge fan of the Spice and Wolf novels, I was excited to find that YenPress was releasing a compilation of all of them for a very fair price. Definitely satisfied with my purchase and would recommend to any fan of the books or anime series. More details below:



Quality: The Spice and Wolf Anniversary Collector's Edition is extremely well put together. Leather hard-back cover feels really nice and looks great. The pages in the book are closer to a heavy cardstock than typical paper, so there's little-to-no risk of tear and they will definitely hold up very well. Also, every page in this book is in color and all illustrations have a full dedicated page to truly appreciate the art (note however, that all art is original so any illustrations that were black and white in the standard novels are also black and white here). The only issues I have with quality is minor; the leather used for the cover is very soft and will easily wear over time around the edges and corners, also the leather is a fingerprint magnet and quickly starts to look "oily" after it's handled.



Translation: Of all the Japanese visual novels I've read, YenPress' Translation of Spice and Wolf is by far the most outstanding. It is very professionally done, true to the original, and they do a phenomenal job of maintaining the "essence" of the original. If you are at all worried about the quality of the translation, don't be. Anyone unfamiliar with the book would think that it was originally written in English, it's that good.



Practicality: I bought this book because it was significantly cheaper than purchasing all the novels individually, and it makes a phenomenal collector's item. I've been reading through this book since I received it and it's definitely doable, but note that it's not as practical or "reading friendly" as the standard novels. The Anniversary Collector's Edition is very large and not something you can hold in your hands, you'll definitely need to have a stand or table to set it on to read it. Additionally, the text is on the smaller side; all pages are formatted into two columns and I'd estimate the text is somewhere close to 10pt Microsoft Word font, possibly smaller. I've got good eyes and don't have any trouble reading it, but there are definitely those out there that could find it difficult or annoying. Keep in mind, this IS a collector's item so you should not buy it expecting to have the same reading experience as the standard books.



Story: I absolutely love the Spice and Wolf novels and would honestly recommend them to anyone. Though the story has been adapted to an anime and it originates from Japan there is little about the story that is "foreign" which could be lost to western readers or turn them off to the story. I would (and have) recommended these books to family members who are anything but anime fans.



Essentially, Spice and Wolf is a story about a medieval-era traveling merchant during the transition period from paganism to Christianity. One of these pagan gods is Holo, the wise wolf of harvest; she has existed for centuries to protect the land and it's people. Having come to realize that the people "no longer have need for her" because of their new practice of Christianity and ability to cultivate their own fruitful harvests through modern agricultural technology, she decides it's time to make her way back to her homeland of Yoitsu in the far north. Holo's means to make it to her homeland is via Craft Lawrence, our travelling merchant who happens across her while passing through Holo's town. Together Holo (taking the form of a pseudo-human, a woman with wolf ears and a tail) and Lawrence travel with the ultimate destination of Yoitsu, but with many, many different destinations and journeys of their own on the way. On one hand, the duo will come to face everything from the wrath of the Church, to the plight of poverty and bad business dealings, to becoming caught in the middle of the economic crisis' of the towns through which they pass. On the other, they build a truly endearing relationship with one another having been two people who were once hopelessly alone - a traveling merchant with no real home and a god who for centuries watched over her people from afar. Hasekura does a fantastic job of building and conveying the relationship between these two characters, and the unique conflicts they face (often related to coin and Lawrence's job as a merchant) are both smart and entertaining.



tl;dr - Read these books. If you want a more cost effective means to get them all with the bonus of them being bound together in a beautiful and well put-together collector's edition, this is for you.