Black Cat 3 by Kentaro Yabuki: B

July 12, 2009 by 1 Comment

blackcat3-125From the back cover:
Train Heartnet, also known as “Black Cat,” was an infamous assassin for a secret organization called Chronos… until he abandoned that cold-blooded existence to live life on his own terms as an easygoing bounty hunter. But is Train’s past as far behind him as he thinks?

Train receives a desperate plea for help from Karl, the mayor of Rubeck City and one of Chronos’s top brass, because a serial murderer with mysterious powers is terrorizing Karl’s town. Eve offers herself as bait to lure the killer out, but will she be caught in a deadly trap?!

Review:
Ugh, what a garish cover. That red background is actually supposed to be bricks, but you can’t tell from the image. At least the contents are more pleasant.

After nabbing a pair of jewel thieves—and experiencing a few flashbacks involving Saya, the woman who convinced him to give up the assassin’s life and become a sweeper instead—Train is contacted by his former boss from Chronos who needs help getting rid of a serial killer who’s terrorizing the town of which he is the mayor. The bounty will be enough to cover Train and Sven’s debts, so they eagerly accept.

It turns out that, through a bunch of silliness involving drinking a forbidden elixir that brings out one’s potential Taoist powers, an escaped convict boxer has achieved invincible strength thanks to Creed’s band of revolutionary minions. Because this is shonen manga, battle between Train and the boxer ensues. It’s not bad, but more interesting is the subsequent fight between a Chronos assassin and Creed’s people. I’m always a sucker for unusual fighting powers, which Creed’s folks definitely possess, and I also like how I ended up unexpectedly rooting for the Chronos guy. Hooray for shades of grey!

Also cool? Eve is sticking around and has ambitions of sweeperhood and we see Sven’s eye-related power for the first time. The latter causes me to make another mental tick mark in the tally of series involving eye exchanges. They’re surprisingly popular.

Filed Under: Manga, Shounen Tagged With: ,

Honey and Clover 4 by Chica Umino: A-

July 12, 2009 by Leave a Comment

honeyclover4From the back cover:
Morita has disappeared, leaving his friends bereft and confused. Hagu and Takemoto turn to their art, while Mayama and Yamada cling to their unrequited loves. When his coworker begins to romance Yamada, Mayama can’t help interfering. But what does he care, when he’s nursing a flame for a woman he hasn’t seen in a year?

Review:
After a chapter in which the gang reacts to Morita’s sudden departure and Takemoto receives a troubling answer when he asks Hagu whether she wants Morita to come back, the pendulum swings back to the Mayama-Yamada-Rika triangle. We learn more about how Mayama met Rika as well as more about his current job and coworkers. One of these coworkers, Nomiya, is a bit of a playboy and when Mayama objects a little too much to Nomiya meeting Yamada to talk about some pottery she’d helped them with, that only makes Nomiya all the more determined to meet her. Mayama goes a bit nuts trying to “protect” Yamada from Nomiya, with various people urging him to question his motives. Does he, after all, just want to keep Yamada in reserve in case things don’t work out with Rika?

One thing I particularly liked about this volume was the use of metaphors to illustrate Yamada’s and Mayama’s feelings. In a chapter from Yamada’s perspective, in which she spends hours getting gussied up for a festival just so Mayama will tell her she looks nice and maybe begin to want her just a little, a plant that she’s been growing has been damaged by a storm. Her mother advises her to snip off a bit of broken stem and allow new growth, but she just can’t give up on it and delays too long, condemning the plant to a slow, withering death. This exactly parallels her situation with Mayama—she just can’t let go of her feelings for him, and persists in holding out hope that romance will bloom. In the next chapter, Mayama’s dogged yet fruitless pursuit of Rika is juxtaposed with the way cicadas spend their brief lives.

It’s okay to spin around and around in the same place. Just so long as you’re singing your heart out.

The comparison is subtlely done, with Umino trusting to readers’ intelligence to make the connection.

I’d also like to commend how well Yamada has been fleshed out as a character. Originally, it seemed like she was just going to be the violent girl who pummels the boys occasionally, but she has really evolved beyond that. Too, I’m liking Mayama a lot more than I’d originally expected to. He’s a pretty complex guy—very aware of his own flaws and yet still driven to do things he doesn’t completely understand. I love how his dislike of being left out of social gatherings comes into play in this volume. Hooray for consistent characterization and continuity (as also exemplified by Yamada’s dad wearing his tea-cozy-as-hat in one panel).

Filed Under: Josei, Manga Tagged With: ,

Honey and Clover 3 by Chica Umino: A-

July 12, 2009 by 1 Comment

honeyclover3From the back cover:
Professor Hanamoto is off in Mongolia on a research trip and Hagu is having a hard time coping. The gang do their best to help her out, especially Takemoto. But as graduation threatens to alter their friendships forever, Hagu begins to turn toward Morita…

Review:
Time moves very quickly in Honey and Clover—already two years have passed since Takemoto met and fell in love with Hagu. While the days pass quickly and those still in school make progress with their studies (except for Morita, the terminal senior), relationships within the group remain at a standstill. In volume two, the focus was more on the triangle consisting of Mayama, Rika (the boss he loves unrequitedly), and Yamada (the classmate who loves him unrequitedly). This time the story revolves around Takemoto’s feelings for Hagu and how he begins to realize that she and Morita are attracted to each other.

One thing I really like about this series is how the guys genuinely try to help each other out with their romantic entanglements. Morita, ever the enigma, turns out to be quite perceptive to Yamada’s feelings and thrusts her (quite literally) into Mayama’s path more than once. Mayama, meanwhile, though incapable of extricating himself from his love woes, dispenses advice to Takemoto, encouraging him to fight for Hagu while Takemoto is inclined to simply step back and accept the situation. I find Takemoto’s attitude here to be pretty fascinating and realistic. He’s a gentle boy whose uncertainties of his own self-worth are well documented and not only that, he’s been a great friend to Hagu and primarily wants whatever will make her happy. I sympathize with him a lot and find his internal monologues—especially the scene when he compares Hagu’s flustered behavior around Morita to her complete relaxation in his presence and concludes that she doesn’t love him—exquisitely painful.

Morita also demonstrates some new layers in this volume. In addition to his perceptiveness, he also betrays that he is rather freaked out by his feelings for Hagu. After a random encounter during which he impulsively kisses her, he flees and ends up going on an extended trip to America on one of those mysterious jobs he does every so often. Takemoto is astounded by this, thinking that Morita has everything Takemoto wants and is just going to run away from it. We don’t see Morita between the kiss and the departure, but he is pretty notorious for his lack of seriousness, so his reaction to run from genuine emotion feels perfectly in character.

The main flaw in this series remains Hagu. She has definitely changed a great deal since arriving at the art school and is learning to be more independent now that Hanamoto is out of the country. Still, though, I feel like I don’t really have a handle on her personality just yet. Another thing that bugs me is that we see the characters working on projects but seldom their outcome. Did Takemoto ever finish that armoire thing he was building to house Hagu’s dolls’ clothes? Did Hagu finish the project for the art exhibition that she was stressing over in the beginning of this volume? I’ve got no idea.

Despite my small complaints, Honey and Clover offers a charming blend of humor and nostalgia that pleases me very much. Could any other series make a bonus story about tea cozies so fun to read? I think not.

Filed Under: Josei, Manga Tagged With: ,

Be Buried in the Rain by Barbara Michaels: B-

July 11, 2009 by Leave a Comment

From the back cover:
There are secrets buried at Maidenwood—dark secrets that span generations. Medical student Julie Newcomb, who once spent four miserable childhood years at this rundown Virginia plantation, would rather not resurrect ancient memories, or face her own fears.

Yet Julie cannot refuse her relatives’ plea that she spend her summer caring for the bedridden—but still malevolent—family matriarch. Reluctantly, Julie agrees, praying that life at Maidenwood will not be as bleak as before. From the first, though, Julie finds Maidenwood a haunted place, not merely echoing with grim reminders, but filled with dark secrets that will become part of her life even today.

Review:
Med student Julie isn’t thrilled when she’s asked to spend her summer caring for the cruel grandmother with whom she spent four dismal years—years that are strangely blank in her memory. She complies to spare her mother the thankless task, and ends up in the middle of a local mystery. Shortly before her arrival, the skeletons of a woman and infant were found on a road cutting through the family property, known as Maidenwood, and Julie and her family are besieged by reporters, archaeologists, and psychic anthropologists who are interested in the story.

Although I enjoyed reading Be Buried in the Rain, there are several things about the way that it’s written that puzzle me. For example, nothing really happens for about 80% of the book. It registers about a two on the suspense-o-meter. Oh, little things occur that do turn out to be important later, but mostly it’s Julie coping with her hateful grandmother, complaining (rather bitchily) about a co-helper’s cooking, caring for a stray dog, and bantering with and/or eventually rekindling a romance with her ex-boyfriend, an archaeologist who’s been given permission to dig at Maidenwood in an attempt to locate the burial site from which the skeletons were presumably exhumed. Things finally start to move near the end after Julie begins work on reconstructing the face of the adult skeleton based on the skull—apparently someone doesn’t want an identification to be made.

The ending leaves rather a lot to be desired, though. One question is not answered particularly well—how the kooky psychic manages to unearth a genuine archaeological find—and a couple of others not at all, including how the skeletons wound up in the middle of the road. Although the book is grounded in reality throughout, at the very end, Michaels throws in a random dollop of supernatural hijinks, with Julie believing she’s been in communion with the dead woman’s spirit and putting forth the theory that each year, the skeletons pop up again and have to be reburied by the party responsible for their deaths. I’d more easily buy this explanation if there were any notion of supernatural doings anywhere other than the final ten pages or so of the novel.

Still, though I have my complaints I still found Be Buried in the Rain to be reasonably entertaining and expect that I shall read more by Barbara Michaels in future.

Filed Under: Books, Suspense Tagged With:

Boys Over Flowers 26 by Yoko Kamio: B+

July 7, 2009 by 1 Comment

boysoverflowers26From the back cover:
Tsukushi struggles to understand her feelings for Tsukasa, her on-and-off boyfriend, and he struggles to not destroy Tokyo. Will the man who came between them step aside? The meddlesome F4 try their hand at forcing Tsukushi and Tsukasa together. All the while Tsukasa’s mother’s spies are hot on their trail!

Review:
If I were to give a one-word reaction to the events of this volume, that word would be “hooray!” Tsukasa intercepts Tsukushi at a bus stop with Amon and makes another attempt at convincing her to be with him, saying, “I don’t want anyone but you. It has to be you.” While moved by his plea, Tsukushi remembers what will happen to her friends’ families if Tsukasa’s mother finds out they’re dating, and so she gets on the bus. Moments later, there’s a terrific scene where she comes running back and, honestly, I have goosebumps just typing about it!

While the fangirl in me would’ve loved a big epic declaration of mutual feeling, that would be completely out of character for these two headstrong people. Instead, awkward tension ensues. Tsukushi is unable to express herself adequately and Tsukasa worries that he has misunderstood yet again. What’s different now is that Tsukushi realizes they’re on the verge of falling into their same old pattern and actually comes out and tells Tsukasa that she wants to be with him. The catch is that she wants their relationship to remain a secret. Amon has bought them some time by telling Kaede’s minions that he and Tsukushi are dating, but the problem of her threats has yet to be resolved.

It’s truly great seeing these two together, and even small things like hugs are so hard-won that they are elevated into monumental moments. Even though they still have to face Kaede—a looming obstacle that has Tsukushi thinking that their happiness is “like standing over water, on a layer of thin ice”—at least they’ll (presumably) be doing so together and seem to understand each other at last.

This volume also picks up the friendship between Sojiro and Yuki, spawned a few volumes back when he helped her get revenge on the boyfriend that betrayed her. I really like how Kamio is handling this subplot. I’ve read a few other series where the heroine’s friends get some attention (Kare Kano and Love*Com come to mind) but only in Boys Over Flowers does it feel like a well-integrated part of the main storyline. In fact, I am downright happy to let Tsukasa and Tsukushi remain united for a while and shift the focus to fleshing out some of the supporting characters. I’d also like to see some kind of resolution to Rui’s relationship with Shizuka, who at least gets a mention here after being off the radar for quite some time.

Lastly, I must spare a paragraph to compliment the cover to this volume. While Tsukushi’s face looks a little frenzied, I love Tsukasa’s expression and the colors are gorgeous.

Filed Under: Manga, Shoujo Tagged With: ,

Boys Over Flowers 25 by Yoko Kamio: B

July 7, 2009 by 1 Comment

boysoverflowers25From the back cover:
Tsukushi has an on-and-off romantic entanglement with a hothead named Tsukasa. Tsukasa has a sketchy relationship with his even more hotheaded mother, named Kaede. Kaede has hired a near sociopath to woo Tsukushi and destroy her son’s relationship with Tsukushi once and for all. Will Tsukushi fall for this?!

Review:
The fake “cousin” hired by Kaede, whose real name is Amon, is not my favorite character, but calling him a sociopath is pretty extreme. It turns out that, one his guise is dropped, he’s actually not a bad guy. Although he has a cynical outlook on love, and advises Tsukushi on several times not to go through suffering on Tsukasa’s account because their love can only last a maximum of a few years, he is still better able to understand her than most others and offers her a different kind of relationship, free from drama but also free from love.

While this whole idea of Tsukushi dating Amon seems mostly an attempt to postpone the inevitable moment when she and Tsukasa finally, irrevocably get together, it does still offer some worthwhile moments. Tsukasa has grown to see Shigeru as a friend, and has a couple of nice conversations with her, including one in which they finally seem to realize that their hyper-wealthy lives are not normal. Also, though he initially feels like there’s nothing he can do about Tsukushi dating Amon, he somehow (exactly how isn’t clear) resolves that he’s going to make Tsukushi his.

And, okay, yes, this is kind of an antiquated idea, but somehow I love Tsukasa for this unwavering devotion. If both of the lead characters were floundering and uncertain, this series would be a mess. With the looming threat to her friends’ families if she gets near Tsukasa, Tsukushi certainly isn’t going to make the first move, so it’s up to him to help this story go somewhere satisfying. Even though I’m well aware that he’s a fictional character, I still want to cheer him on.

Filed Under: Manga, Shoujo Tagged With: ,

The Sharing Knife: Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold: B+

July 6, 2009 by 2 Comments

From the front flap:
Young Fawn Bluefield and soldier-sorcerer Dag Redwing Hickory have survived magical dangers and found, in each other, love and loyalty. But even their strength and passion cannot overcome the bigotry of their own kin, and so, leaving behind all they have known, the couple sets off to find fresh solutions to the perilous split between their peoples.

But they will not journey alone, as they acquire comrades along the way. As the ill-assorted crew is tested and tempered on its journey to where great rivers join, Fawn and Dag will discover surprising new abilities both Lakewalker and farmer, a growing understanding of the bonds between themselves and their kinfolk, and a new world of hazards both human and uncanny.

Review:
After one book taking place primarily in the farmer world and another that focuses on Lakewalker life, Passage, the third book in The Sharing Knife series, finds Dag and Fawn working to bring those two worlds closer together. Having witnessed the loss of life caused by farmers’ ignorance of the warning signs of a forming Malice, and not willing to stay at a camp at which the validity of his marriage is questioned, Dag gives up his patroller life and decides to become an ambassador of sorts, explaining some of the most fundamental Lakewalker secrets to what farmers as will listen.

After a brief stay with Fawn’s family, Dag and Fawn (along with her brother, Whit) hit the road, visiting a few towns and eventually booking passage on the Fetch, a flatboat headed downriver to the sea. From there, they encounter a variety of (mostly) likable characters, like Berry (boss of the Fetch), Remo and Barr (a pair of disgraced young patrollers), and a bevy of other boatmen. Dag performs several impressive feats of healing, works out some finer details of groundwork, ponders some troubling questions, and makes a lot of rather repetitive speeches. The action picks up a little when Berry’s search for her missing father, brother, and fiancé yields some unexpected results, and Dag is ultimately forced to question whether farmers and Lakewalkers aren’t better off living separate lives after all.

Although parts of Passage are quite slow—like the speeches and the many discussions on the ethics of Dag’s developing abilities—it’s still my favorite of the series thus far, a factor I attribute mostly to the influx of new people. Suddenly, a series that has been almost exclusively about two characters has developed an ensemble cast, and I find it to be a big improvement. My favorite of the new characters is actually not so new—Fawn’s brother Whit has been around before, but really becomes a new person due to the things he sees and experiences on this journey.

Whit’s growth also serves a handy example for one of my favorite things about the series: women’s roles. Bujold manages to show women in positions of power—boat captains, patrol leaders—about as often as women living more domestic lives without making a judgment about which has more value. Whit, having grown up on a farm, is used to men being in charge, and early on accuses Fawn of being “just a girl.” Dag expertly turns this around to talk about all of the brave and valiant things his first wife, Kauneo, accomplished when she was “just a girl.” After witnessing Fawn’s practical cleverness on several occasions, and having his notions of gender roles challenged by Berry, with whom he falls in love, Whit comes to value Fawn’s input in a way that the rest of her family does not.

Despite enjoying Passage quite a bit, I find I have some trepidations about Horizon, the fourth and final volume in the series. I do like Dag and Fawn, but they weren’t the main attraction for me this time. I hope Berry, Whit, Remo, and Barr have significant roles in Horizon else I shall be disappointed.

Additional reviews of The Sharing Knife: Passage can be found at Triple Take.

Filed Under: Books, Fantasy, Romance, Triple Take Tagged With:

On Bended Knee by Ruri Fujikawa: B-

July 6, 2009 by 1 Comment

onbended-125On Bended Knee is a collection of short stories featuring professional adults (pediatricians, chefs, professors, et cetera) linked together by, as the back cover points out, the common theme of learning to accept one’s true feelings for another. Although too brief to achieve greatness, each story is a pleasant enough read and all are free from the nonconsensual scenes that plague other boys’ love titles.

The drawback of having a common theme is that the stories can get repetitive after a while. There are five tales in On Bended Knee and three of them follow pretty much the same pattern:

1.One member of a couple is a bit too demonstrative.
2.The more reserved member sets some boundaries like “don’t touch me at work” or “don’t try to ravish me in my sleep.”
3.The other party respects said boundaries and keeps his distance.
4.The reserved fellow begins to miss the other guy.
5.Reconciliation and a tacked-on sex scene (featuring many amusing sound effects) ensue.

Despite its flaws, On Bended Knee is pretty good. It’s not the most amazing thing around, to be sure, but you could definitely do worse.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

Filed Under: Boys' Love, Manga, Short Stories Tagged With: ,

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray: B-

July 2, 2009 by 2 Comments

greatterribleFrom the back cover:
Gemma Doyle isn’t like other girls. Girls with impeccable manners, who speak when spoken to, who remember their station, who dance with grace, and who will lie back and think of England when it’s required of them.

No, sixteen-year-old Gemma is an island unto herself, sent to the Spence Academy in London after tragedy strikes her family in India. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma finds her reception a chilly one. She’s not completely alone, though… she’s been followed by a mysterious young man, sent to warn her to close her mind against the visions.

For it’s at Spence that Gemma’s power to attract the supernatural unfolds; there she becomes entangled with the school’s most powerful girls and discovers her mother’s connection to a shadowy, timeless group called the Order. It’s there that her destiny waits… if only Gemma can believe in it.

Review:
It’s 1895, and sixteen-year-old Gemma Doyle has finally got her wish and has come to London. It’s not how she’d envisioned achieving this goal, however, as it occurs only after her mother, who’d been steadfastly diverting Gemma’s pleas to leave India and see London for quite some time now, kills herself under mysterious circumstances. With Gemma’s father incapacitated by grief, she is largely left in the charge of her grandmother, who promptly ships her off to Spence, a boarding school where she will be made into a proper (read: obedient) lady.

While all of this is going on, and while Gemma is being bullied by a group of influential girls at school, she’s having disturbing visions and receiving warnings to quit having them from a handsome Indian boy named Kartik. Eventually she both befriends those girls and decides to disregard Kartik’s warnings entirely. The girls learn of a powerful group of women, the Order, and decide to reenact some of their rituals, not realizing at first how very real it all is. Things get out of hand, as magical dabbling often does, and the consequences are rather grim.

I’ve got mixed feelings about A Great and Terrible Beauty. On the negative side, it takes quite a while before the story makes sense. It’s not clear, for example, whether Kartik’s warnings ought to be heeded and Gemma is a fool for disregarding them, or whether he is simply trying to keep her from developing her powers as she should. As a result, I couldn’t tell whether I ought to find Gemma willful and annoying or cheer her on, which was a problem again later when she is shown some magical runes and then promptly told she mustn’t ever use them, yadda yadda. Well, you just know she’s going to, and at least I found her rationale for finally giving in kind of sympathetic, but we’re subjected to all kinds of petulant wheedling before that point. The ending is also rather strange in that I don’t understand how Gemma doing one thing causes another to happen.

On the positive side, I like the atmosphere of the school and its grounds as well as the evocation of the time period. The book is at its most compelling when it focuses on the plight of women in this era: little is expected of them save for placid compliance—no real academics are taught at Spence, for example—and they are often used as bargaining chips in marriages not of their own choosing. Each of the four girls in the new Order is unhappy with her lot in some degree, summed up nicely in a ghost story as told by former bully, Felicity:

Once upon a time, there were four girls. One was pretty, one was smart, one charming and one… one was mysterious. But they were all damaged, you see. Something not right about the lot of them. Bad blood, big dreams… They were all dreamers, these girls. One by one, night after night, the girls came together and they sinned. Do you know what that sin was? No one? Their sin was that they believed, believed they could be different, special. They believed they could change who they were. Not damaged, unloved, cast-off things. They would be alive, adored, needed, necessary.

But it wasn’t true.

I listened to A Great and Terrible Beauty as an unabridged audiobook, and I’d be remiss if I neglected to praise the excellent narrator, Josephine Bailey. She does a truly amazing job in giving each character a distinctive voice—so much so that it’s hard to believe at times that it’s one person behind them all. Her performance is one of the most impressive I’ve ever heard and I’ve heard quite a lot.

At this point, I am unsure whether I wish to continue with the series. In its favor is the fact that I already own the other two books in the trilogy, but since I find the plot rather muddled and the protagonist quite irritating at times that’s about all it has going for it at the moment. Besides my completist nature, that is.

Filed Under: Books, Historical Fantasy, Supernatural, YA Tagged With:

Boys Over Flowers 24 by Yoko Kamio: B

June 30, 2009 by 1 Comment

boysoverflowers24From the back cover:
Tsukushi has been unconscious for two days and wakes up in Tsukasa’s cousin’s home! This terrifying man saved her life and now he’s courting her! What is the secret behind this mysterious cousin who so closely resembles Tsukasa, and what could be the reason for his intense hatred of Tsukasa? Why does Tsukasa not know anything about him?

Review:
I find I’m kind of running out of things to say about this series. Each volume is usually a combination of good scenes between Tsukushi and Tsukasa and silly plot happenings that often border on ludicrous. Volume 24 manages to be pretty decent without much direct interaction between the two leads, at least.

Tsukushi is pursued by a guy who claims to be Tsukasa’s cousin, though he pretty quickly reveals himself (to the reader) to be more than he’s letting on. Tsukushi’s rich friends are suspicious and take it upon themselves to investigate, and though this involves a bunch of mistaken notions about detecting, it’s all still kind of sweet.

The best part of the story at this point is kind of underplayed. Tsukasa has already asked Tsukushi if she’s never once regarded him as just a guy, and seeing a rival version of himself without all the rich boy baggage is bothering him. In an attempt to prove how normal he is, for example, he decides that he is going to travel by train. The experience is almost entirely played for comedy, but there is one moment with Akira where Tsukasa asks, “Akira, I’m not very different from these other guys on the train, am I?” Alas, he doesn’t get the answer he wants.

Once the truth about the cousin is revealed, Tsukushi gets good and fired up and demands to see Kaede. While she’s feeling rebellious, I’d like to see her finally confess her love to Tsukasa, but I have a feeling that’s still several volumes away, at least. Sigh.

Filed Under: Manga, Shoujo Tagged With: ,
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