Fullmetal Alchemist

Not to be confused with the manga, this is a collection of short stories outside of the main plot of FMA. The stories themselves are independent on each other, so much that you could read the volumes in random order and it wouldn’t matter. Expect the level of content as you would from a side story OVA, just in the form of a novel. So no, there isn’t anything important to the overall FMA plot contained here, but it’s okay, because that’s not expected in the first place. I would in fact commend this for capturing the essence of FMA writing quite well – if youtold me these stories were written by Arakawa herself, I’d believe you, it’s very similar in style to the small adventures in the early parts of the original work. Considering the “unimportantness” of the content, I don’t think the plots of those separate stories need to be talked about in detail, so just know that if you’re a fan of Fullmetal Alchemist, there’s quite high chance you will enjoy reading them to at least some extent. Are they so great to be among the current highest rated light novels on site? Not really. Is it still a fun read? Mostly. Is the overall score so high because considerable number of people are confusing this for the manga entry? Could be.