Has anybody translated these novels at all? I bought a few of them a while back and I've been working on translating the Ryuki one for myself- I guess I was thinking exactly along the lines of Bigdog, ahahaha. If there's interest I can post my mediocre attempts at translation sometime.
As far as the reading level is concerned, they use a good deal of the kanji that are required for standard Japanese, so you need to know anywhere from 1000 - 2000 characters to read 'em. That means you have to at least be able to read as well as a middle schooler, ahahah. There isn't furigana or anything either, so that's a real bummer.