I want to make it clear right away that I wouldn't recommend anyone to even start "Her Majesty’s Swarm." Even if I were to highlight its positive aspects, I would only do so for the sake of completeness. The ending – yes, the manga concluded after 42 chapters – ruins everything.
But let's start from the beginning. "Her Majesty’s Swarm" revolves around a nameless girl who is obsessed with a strategy game and was quite skilled at it. Her favorite faction was the so-called Arachnae, a swarm of spiders sharing a collective mind. As is often the case in manga, she suddenly wakes up as the queen of this swarm, which seeks death, destruction, and victory...
There are many interesting ideas that such a plot could explore. How did she get into this world? How does her connection to this swarm affect her? Whom and how does she attack? Does she build a kingdom? Can she somehow return? These are questions that a reader might ponder, and to my surprise, the manga does too. Frankly, other than these diverse questions, I found everything else rather mediocre – I don't like the art style, the characters, the world, and the answers to the questions are not adequately addressed to like, understand, or form any strong emotional attachment to. But hey, the manga still has time to answer all these questions, to make the strategy more engaging, to build a subplot around nation-building or something similar – right? As I mentioned earlier, the manga is concluded, so that won't happen.
But hey, doesn`t this mean it's just a mediocre, very brutal strategy isekai manga? Unfortunately not, because you can tell how rushed the ending is. You can tell it only came about because the manga had to be discontinued. Most, if not all, questions are left unanswered or answered very unsatisfactorily, the ending feels sudden and open. If I hadn't been warned beforehand, I would have been disappointed in my search for further chapters.
So it should be understandable that I do not recommend "Her Majesty’s Swarm." In summary, I saw potential, waited for something to be done with it, and then the story was abruptly cut short. Even though the light novel apparently continues, after the rather mediocre chapters and the dreadful ending, I really have no desire to spend any more time with "Her Majesty’s Swarm."
