Whenever you see a book about Sasuke you know that things are going to get good. This one takes place shortly after the main series but before the big timeskips so that’s fun. Sasuke is early on in his journey to rediscover himself and this book has some good action scenes and a tight plot. Yeah you’re never actually worried for Sasuke but they still manage to throw in some good opponents for him to go up against and that’s what counts.

The story starts with Sasuke being asked by Kakashi to look into some disappearances that have been occurring as of late within the Hidden Leaf Village as well as the lightning area. He bumps into two ninja named Chino and Nowaki as well as an old man named Io. They don’t know much about the disappearances but they are busy dealing with a dangerous lightning cult led by a man who worships Sasuke as some kind of a hero. This troubles Sasuke since he is trying to put the villainous days behind him and in a way this whole situation goes back to him. So he will be forced to address this and perhaps it is related to his main mission. Does he still have what it takes to defeat opponents like this?

Obviously the answer is yes so I’m not going to keep you in suspense here. At best you could say that the only difficult part here is trying to defeat the enemies without murdering them and to be 100% fair that is a decent excuse. In fact it’s the only thing that gives Naruto and the others even mild difficulty because the brainwashed shinobi will blow up upon any kind of contact. So for example if Naruto punches one of these guys then he instantly dies. So this is the device used to keep Naruto from immediately saving the day. While I have a little doubt on this actually being a viable option (Since Naruto can create a few thousand shadow clones and still head to every battlefield like in the war) I like the attempt. It’s actually a reasonable situation and you could say Naruto just wants to really focus here.

In general I was glad to see him show up. Sakura and Hinata also get a solid role as they help out and everyone does their part. Seeing the various characters like the Raikage appear as well makes the novel feel more important than your average side story. Of course you would expect no less from Sasuke Uchiha right? The main story is obviously still with him as he is breaking out of his shell a little bit but also being rather difficult for the other characters to deal with. I liked his portrayal and the novel does actually give him a happy ending so that was nice. He’s definitely earned one after everything he went through there.

Sure there might be a few power level items here but in general he was always in control of the situation which is what you would expect. You guys can hype up all of these other eye techniques as much as you want but at the end of the day the Sharingan will always be the #1 technique out there. Nothing else can match it. It was fun to see a little tournament even get squeezed into the plot where Sasuke didn’t even need his Sharingan. At this point that is the level of ability you would expect from him. Sasuke and Naruto had power on the level of the gods relative to normal shinobi.

One theme within the series that would continue from here is about the secret darkness that still plagues the ninja world. What I never like about this is the implication that it all must be hidden from Naruto because he can’t handle it. Just tell him already so he can fix it. Apparently there is a bunch of human trafficking going on, illegal betting tournaments, corrupt people murdering others for sport, etc. I’m glad that Sasuke stepped in to shut it down but why is Orochimaru still on the loose? How can this whole thing still be so well known? I want to see Naruto step in and shut everything down. It’ll never happen and so it’s a very fair criticism of Naruto and friends (Kakashi should get a good chunk of blame too) because you can’t just change parts of the world and not finish the job. The biggest people who must handle the guilt though are guys like Yamato who had a first hand view of the shady elements of the world and could really spill the beans on everything.

That’s a bit of a tangent but it’s crazy how corrupt things still are. As for the new characters, I liked Chino a lot. She’s very casual with Sasuke and a bit too cheerful for his liking but she’s always a lot of fun. Her scenes are great and I thought she really went through a lot. Ultimately she knows how to take care of herself and has a whole lot of conviction. She was way more interesting than I expected. On the other hand, everyone else is rather forgettable. Io was just annoying and wouldn’t listen to reason. Nowaki was okay but more along for the ride.

I did like the villain Karyu though. He was a little simpleminded and not experienced enough to be more of a threat but he was a nice contrast to the more evil days of Sasuke. This was a good way to have Sasuke confront his past yet again although you could say there are no shortages of moments like that in this novel. In a way that’s the whole point of the adventure as he has to keep staring straight into the darkness while hoping to finally get away from it and into the light. It’s about forgiving himself a little rather than spending all of his days atoning.

Overall, these chapter books always go by so quickly. You just blast through them at a crazy fast pace and I’d say a lot of that is due to the plot being interesting and a lot of it is just because it’s short. The text is fairly large and the pages aren’t that big after all. For example the average Maximum Ride book is 400-500 pages while this one is only around 150. Given that, I’d say they managed to cover a lot here. It’s great supplementary material so if you read the manga then I would definitely recommend checking this out. I wish they would do many more books like this for other franchises as well. There’s always tons of side story ideas you can do to flesh things out and expand the universe.

Overall 8/10