Key Details
- Narration: Katy Vaughn has to supply the comic beat that a drawn panel gives away for nothing, because the humor in this series is almost entirely reaction.
- Themes: A saint hiding in plain sight, a great beast disguised as vermin, a search party closing in
- Mood: Light, brisk and mildly panicked
- Verdict: Enjoyable at six hours if you are already following Fia, on a listing so confused about format that one buyer received the wrong product.
Fia disguises a great beast as the weakest monster she can think of and hopes nobody at the First Knight Brigade looks too closely. Zavilia's small size hides only so much, his aura gives him away regardless, and one very polite person starts asking questions at exactly the wrong moment. Six hours and seventeen minutes of audiobook with Katy Vaughn reading. The listing around it cannot decide which product it is selling, and at least one buyer has already paid for the wrong one.
Where This One Lands
Touya's comic engine has always been the gap between what Fia believes she is doing and what everyone around her can plainly see. She thinks she is keeping a low profile. She is escorting one of the three great beasts, dressed as vermin, while an entire search party combs the forest for a black dragon. The disguise itself is not the joke. The confidence with which she maintains it is.
The 2 August 2022 five-star describes the effect precisely: Fia has all of these captains acting like fools, a new one turns up in this volume and reacts very amusingly to both her and Zavilia, and then an expedition begins and matters get out of hand quickly. That same account reports something happening right at the end that made the next volume feel urgent, which is exactly the shape a good serial installment takes.
Keeping the series from being one joke on repeat is the fact that the danger works on its own terms. A secret saint under scrutiny is one observation away from exposure, and the copy is careful to note that the interloper's politeness offers no reassurance whatsoever. Volume three tightens that screw without releasing it, which is the correct job for a middle book.
Timing is the whole assignment. This is a comedy of reactions: somebody sees Zavilia and grasps what he is, somebody watches Fia say something ludicrous with complete sincerity, and the humor lives in the beat between statement and response. On a page with pictures, that beat comes free from the layout. Spoken aloud, a reader has to build every one of them from scratch.
Just over six hours is short enough for two sittings, which suits a volume running on momentum rather than architecture. The forest search carries a good deal of it, and the material rewards continuous listening because the comedy accumulates: a cover story that only holds while nobody looks closely grows funnier with each additional person looking.
Audio can also do something the printed version cannot, which is give Fia and the people misreading her genuinely separate registers. Her sincerity is the straight line and everyone else delivers the punchline, so hearing the two kept apart is close to hearing a double act. The runtime leaves room to establish that pattern and then vary it, and a light fantasy series stands or falls on whether the pattern stays fresh.
Things to Know Before Starting A Tale of the Secret Saint, Vol. 3
One buyer has already been caught out, and the warning deserves relaying in full. A one-star filed from the Netherlands on 17 August 2022 reports that the product received was the manga, not the light novel the title indicates, and adds that the picture on the listing showed as much for anyone who checked before ordering late at night. That response carries no complaint about the story whatsoever. It exists purely to stop the next person repeating the mistake.
Everything else on the page supports the confusion rather than clearing it. The record carries a page count of 190, an ISBN, a print publisher and a June 2022 publication date, every one of which describes a physical book, and all of it sits beside a narrator credit and a runtime. A hundred and ninety pages across six hours and seventeen minutes works out near thirty pages an hour, a rate that fits prose and cannot describe a comic. The series field, meanwhile, carries a name and no number at all, so nothing but the title says this is the third volume.
Art is the other giveaway, and the other loss. A June 2022 five-star calls this a fun read and the art absolutely amazing, praise payable only to something you look at. No illustrator appears in the credits and no translator does either; the credits list an author and a narrator and then stop. Whatever the recording contains, the artwork that response admired is not part of it.
Read the ratings with all of that in view. The page reports 4.7 across a hundred and seventy-five, while the five visible responses grade 5, 5, 5, 5 and 1, averaging half a point lower. One of those fives runs to five words. Another, from January 2024, reports that the books arrived in excellent condition and that both series are very cute, which grades a delivery rather than a story. Four of the five are demonstrably about a printed object, and nothing on this page speaks to the recording at all.
Recommended For
Readers already following Fia know exactly what they are buying, and this is a solid installment of it: a heroine whose humility is a running gag, a companion who cannot stay hidden, and a brigade of competent people reduced to bafflement by both. Under seven hours is an easy commitment for anybody who enjoyed the first two volumes.
Steer clear if you want the manga. That version exists, it is what at least one buyer received while trying to order this, and no amount of reading aloud substitutes for panels. The reverse holds too: if the artwork was a large part of why you liked the series, this format removes it and hands back a performance instead.
Newcomers should start at volume one whatever the format. The story opens on a cover identity already established, a companion already acquired and a brigade the reader is assumed to know by name, and the page offers no series number to warn anybody off. Beginning in the middle of a deception plot means missing the deception, which here is most of the entertainment.
