What are the Fullmetal Alchemist light novels?
Alongside the manga, Square Enix published six Fullmetal Alchemist light novels in Japan between 2003 and 2007. They were written by Makoto Inoue, a prose author working from Arakawa's world and characters, and illustrated by Arakawa herself, whose spot illustrations and covers make the novels feel like part of the manga line rather than licensed merchandise. Viz Media translated all six into English in paperback between 2005 and 2008.
The best known is the first, The Land of Sand, a two part story about the brothers investigating a town prospering on a fake philosopher's stone and two impostor Elrics. It was published before the manga reached similar themes, and both television adaptations mined it: the 2003 anime adapted it directly in its early episodes, giving the novels a permanent place in the franchise's screen history.
The other volumes, The Abducted Alchemist, The Valley of White Petals, Under the Faraway Sky, The Ties That Bind and The Strategist's Alchemy in some listings' ordering, mix case of the week adventures with quieter character pieces, including a Mustang focused military story and a wartime Ishval account. Inoue writes pastiche with a light touch, and Arakawa's afterword exchanges with him, printed in the books, are half the fun for collectors.
Physically the English novels are small mass market paperbacks with Arakawa cover art, inexpensive at about $9.99 each in the United States at the time, and they have been out of print for years. Complete six volume English sets trade secondhand as a unit because individual later volumes, especially the sixth, were printed in smaller numbers and surface far less often than the first.
Readers should place them as side stories: nothing in the novels is required by the manga, and Arakawa treated them as authorized expansions rather than canon chapters. Their value to a shelf is texture, more time with the cast in the gaps of the journey, drawn and approved by the original artist.
