Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Books

The Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce: B+

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From the back cover:
Aeriel is kidnapped by the Darkangel, swept up into his dozen black wings and carried to his distant keep. There she is to serve his brides—thirteen pitiful creatures who were once beautiful, before the Darkangel drained away their souls. Aeriel would free them, but now that she, too, is one of the Darkangel’s captives, she can do no other than obey—even while she knows she must destroy him.

For when he has found his final bride, he will come fully into his sinister powers. Aeriel must kill him first, even though deep within him is a spark of goodness that makes her love him—a spark that could redeem even his evil.

Review:
I realize now that I never actually read the back of the book before starting this. It sure makes Aeriel seem kind of… flighty. Oopsie, got kidnapped, now I take orders and swoon over Mr. Tall, Winged, and Evil. This really does her a disservice.

The beginning of the book was good and moved quickly, though in the middle section things dragged a little bit for me. Thankfully, the action picked up again at the end and events moved swiftly on to their conclusion. There were a few plot elements that were sort of obvious to me, but which might not have been so for a YA reader. They were resolved satisfactorily for the most part, though perhaps with a little too much convenient magic at hand. One further quibble is that I never really got a handle on the terms used for the passage of time, so I could never be quite sure how long things were taking, which was pretty annoying.

I’ve got the other two in the trilogy courtesy of my local library, so will be launching into them forthwith. I’ll have to think of my own description for the next one, because the back of it is super spoilery for The Darkangel.

The Morning Star by Nick Bantock: D

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From the inside flap:
Plunged into an otherworldly maze, Matthew Sedon and Isabella de Reims are stretched to the limits of love, of certainty, and of their belief in the powerful guidance of Griffin and Sabine. Isabella is drawn into her predestined journey to Egypt, a journey that forces her to explore a world beyond her imagination. In Alexandria, challenging his deepest fears, Matthew makes his own compelling discoveries in the fertile fields of both archaeology and the human heart.

In The Morning Star, the mystery that began with an enigmatic postcard from Sabine Strohem to Griffin Moss reaches its dramatic conclusion.

Review:
Lie! It does not reach a dramatic conclusion! It reaches an enigmatic one, with nothing more clarified than before, though I still believe I’m right about the MPD theory.

Anyway, I sum up the book thusly (warning, spoilery):

Griffin-personality: Isabella, go see Matthew. But be sure to mosey.
Isabella-personality: Matthew, I’m gonna mosey your way.
Matthew-personality: (to Isabella) Rock on! Btw, I totally love you. (to Sabine) Hey, I snuck in and felt up the funky statue. It had an orb on its head.
Sabine-personality: That’s the Morning Star. It somehow represents the different planes we all exist on. Or something. Watch out for sneaky personality.
Matthew-personality: (to Isabella) I can now draw like Sabine. Wanna draw you nekkid!
Isabella-personality: (to Griffin) Hey dude, check out my completely wacked out vision where I munch on some flowers.
Matthew-personality: (to Sabine) I’m bored. No chicks to bang and sneaky personality dude got my dig shut down.
Griffin-personality: (to Isabella) Good job moving slow. Follow the cat.
Isabella-personality: (to Matthew) Hey, sneaky personality sent some thugs after me but samurai protector dude vanquished them. I love U 2 OMG! I’m totally gonna put out next time I see you.
Matthew-personality: (to Isabella) OMG, I get to sexx0r a badass. I’m not worthy.
Sabine-personality: (to Matthew) One time I went into a waterfall nekkid. And you totally need to chill about this “not worthy” thing.
Matthew-personality: (to Sabine) I went out and dug a hole to make sneaky personality think I’m up to something.
Isabella-personality: (to Griffin) This time I had a vision where I’m riding on a cat amidst a war of birds. OK, bye~!
Griffin-personality: (to Isabella) I think everyone shares the same dream. Keep following the cat. Btw, hope you like this postcard with the chicken watching some chick get groped by a disembodied blue hand alongside a snippet of a chinese checkers board.
Matthew-personality: (to Isabella) Sneaky personality accosted me about the statue or something. I totally still love you and all these body parts (see attached list).
Isabella-personality: (to Matthew) I feel sorry for the Minotaur. The wind smells like you.
Griffin-personality: (to Isabella) OK, cease moseying! Get thee hence to Egypt!
Matthew-personality: (to Isabella) Hey, I think we might not be real, but we’re all in that one dude’s head like swanjun totally thinks is the case. Oh, p.s., I love you and your hot bod!
Sabine-personality: (to Matthew) She’s coming, dude! I’ll shut up so you can get busy without distractions.
Isabella-personality: (to Matthew) Some shadow of a fig tree just tried to ravish me, I think.
Matthew-personality: (to Griffin) We totally did IT! Y’know, IT. Sneaky personality tried to get in, but the cat and samurai were all, “No way, man.”
Sabine and Griffin personalities: (to Matthew and Isabella) Good job, you little horndogs. Now sneaky personality’s plans have been foiled and the membrane between our planes is dissolving. Or something.

Alexandria by Nick Bantock: C-

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From the inside flap:
Intrigue turns to danger and romance turns to passion as Matthew Sedon and Isabella de Reims, lovers separated by continents, struggle to make sense of a world beyond experience. Only the guidance of Griffin Moss and Sabine Strohem—experienced navigators of myth and reality—can keep them safe. In Egypt, mysterious forces vie to keep Matthew away from his archaeological dig just as he is about to make a vital discovery, one that may explain his increasingly strange and strong connection with Sabine. In the boulevards of Paris, under Griffin’s tutelage, Isabella learns to trust her own powerful instincts.

Review:
The book starts with a page that reads, “… some revelation is at hand.”

“Yeah, right,” I think. “I’d like to see it.”

Are revelations at hand? Not in the kind of revelation-that-makes-stuff-make-sense sort of way. I now think everything’s transpiring in the head of one loony with MPD.

I suppose there’s a bit more action in this one. The sneaky personality menaces some of the other ones or something, and there’s a funky statue at an archaeological site, and some chick sees visions with baboons coming out of hills that are really lion’s bellies, and… Um.

At least there’s only one more.

The Gryphon by Nick Bantock: C

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From the back cover:
With over three million copies sold, the Griffin & Sabine novels are beloved around the world for their artful fusion of captivating storytelling, lush illustration, and fascinating correspondence. At last, best-selling author Nick Bantock brings us a new volume in the Griffin & Sabine story—a tale rich in the artistry, mystery, and surprise that makes the original saga so beloved. As the remarkable fates of Griffin and Sabine are gradually revealed, we are introduced to Matthew and Isabella, long-distance lovers who find themselves entwined not only in each other’s lives, but also in a perilous and alluring intrigue.

Review:
First off, I don’t recommend buying these books simply because they’re very costly. They’re about $20 each because of all those aforementioned lush illustrations, but can be read in about the same amount of time as a graphic novel but with less overall content. If you’re lucky like me, your library will have them and the patrons will have been conscientious and not messed any of the letters up. (You can actually slip these out of envelopes and unfold them and stuff.)

This is the first book of the second trilogy regarding the correspondence of Griffin and Sabine. The line up there about their fates being revealed is not true at all. They’re still as murky as ever. And now more murk has been introduced with Matthew and Isabella, who I think are both actually real, but I’m not sure. There are lots of debates regarding these novels as to whether Sabine’s real or if Griffin’s just insane. I definitely tend toward the latter camp, but would like some confirmation. Alas, I don’t think I’m going to get any.

These books are like poetry. Lots of postcards with weird art and letters with cryptic hints that’re probably symbolic but which I often don’t fathom and can’t really be bothered to try too hard to interpret. Still, they’re pretty interesting and not any serious investment of time. Just don’t fork out $120 for the whole set because you’ll regret it.

The Prince of Tennis 13 by Takeshi Konomi: B

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From the back cover:
Seishun Academy is in the finals of the District Preliminaries and the only player standing in their way is mean, violent, and ill-tempered Jin Akutsu of Yamabuki Junior High! Ryoma desperately needs to toughen up mentally, as Jin has figured out a way to punish him with his powerful shots. Meanwhile, Seishun holds more intra-squad games, and this time someone loses his spot on the starting team…!

Review:
Looking at individual elements in this volume, it makes me wonder why I like this series so much and can’t wait to have thirty-plus volumes to reread and wallow in. Ryoma is quite snotty, and in his match with Jin, I was rooting for him to lose (as I have trouble remembering outcomes of matches from the anime). Then there was a rather pointless chapter where Ryoma beat a basketball player in a free-throw contest by whacking a tennis ball with a broom…

I enjoyed the intra-squad chapters a lot, though, particularly Inui and Tezuka’s match. Inui is alright, though I think his tennis style is a little cheesy, but Tezuka’s my favorite character, and I’m always glad when he gets to be all badass.

So, kind of cheesy, yes, but oh so totally addictive.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding: C

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From the back cover:
Lurching from the cappuccino bars of Notting Hill to the blissed-out shores of Thailand, Bridget Jones searches for The Truth in spite of pathetically unevolved men, insane dating theories, and Smug Married advice. She experiences a zeitgeist-esque Spiritual Epiphany somewhere between the pages of How to Find the Love You Want Without Seeking It, protective custody, and a lightly chilled Chardonnay.

Review:
Several things annoyed me about this book. I don’t like plots that hinge on misunderstandings that nobody really tries to explain. And Bridget somehow seems even more incompetent than the last book, letting a situation with a builder just linger on unresolved, and just not earning my sympathy very much. It was still cute, and funny at times. It’s probably worth a read, but I found it quite frustrating.

Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding: A-

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From the back cover:
Bridget Jones’s Diary is the devastatingly self-aware, laugh-out-loud daily chronicle of Bridget’s permanent, doomed quest for self-improvement—a year in which she resolves to: reduce the circumference of each thigh by 1.5 inches, visit the gym three times a week not just to buy a sandwich, form a functional relationship with a responsible adult—and learn to program the VCR.

Review:
I’d seen the film but never read the book, so recently listened to the unabridged audio read by Barbara Rosenblatt. She was particularly adept at making Bridget’s mom even more crazily annoying, and did lots of amusing things with all of Bridget’s aha!s and la la las.

This is a quick, funny, and enjoyable book, with a few flaws that are forgivable. I’m still not convinced how Mark Darcy fell in love with Bridget to start with, and seriously, 131 lbs. is so totally not fat whatsoever. I can’t believe Hollywood made a big deal of Renee Zellweger plumping up for this role when the character only weighs 131 lbs. at the most! It’d be one thing if Bridget were the only one to believe this, but various people she meets seem to reinforce the notion.

The parallels with Pride and Prejudice are cleverly done. I particularly like how Bridget’s mom is sort of Mrs. Bennet and Lydia simultaneously. It’s also v. addictive in terms of language. Go read it!

Hana-Kimi 11 by Hisaya Nakajo: C

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From the back cover:
Mizuki and her friends go to the country, where they meet and try to help a ghost pining for his lost love. Then, for the big Christmas dance party, Mizuki and Nakao are recruited to help make up for a shortage of females—by dressing up as girls! This turnabout for Mizuki, however, proves to be the least of the complications that flare up when the whole ploy proves too successful!

Review:
With this volume, I’ve begun to lose my patience with Hana-Kimi. The ghost story is pretty lame, and is only an excuse for Nakatsu to glomp on Mizuki some more. It’s just a little two-chapter deal that really doesn’t serve any narrative purpose. It does introduce Umeda’s parents, however. His dad’s pretty foxy.

And then, yet again, Mizuki is forced to pretend to pretend to be a girl. This bunch of boys is pretty obsessed with making some of their classmates get into drag! Buuuuut, Sano does look awfully cute dancing and there are a couple of sweet moments between them.

So, even though there’s a dash of lame in these stories, there’s still enough here to keep me interested.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: A

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From the back cover:
Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of 1967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Calliope into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.

Review:
I don’t normally go in for multi-generational family epics, and I still think the basic concept is a boring one, but in Middlesex it’s handled in such a way that it’s all leading up to some revelations made in the first paragraph and explains how they came about. About halfway in or so when I discovered I was enjoying the sprawling epic, I looked it up and found that it had won the Pulitzer Prize for literature. I think it’s well-deserved in this case.

Although I do own a paperback copy of Middlesex, I actually listened to an unabridged audio recording read by Kristoffer Tabori, who was excellent. The language is not exactly florid, but it is pretty detail-rich. It might’ve been annoying to me if I were looking at it on a page, but Tabori adopts a storyteller mien that makes all the description seem necessary to convey the proper atmosphere.

There are a few things that keep this from getting an A+, however. There are two characters who receive quirky nicknames, which can come off as just a little pretentious. When Calliope’s brother is called Chapter Eleven in the first chapter, it totally elicited a groan from me, because I generally hate books that do stuff like that. It is eventually explained, but it just seems a little look-at-me clever. Also, there’s a bit of a plot hole at the end.

So, a plain ol’ A it is. Get the unabridged audio if you can.

Pangs

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Man, I am hungry. I’ve been sick the past few days and haven’t really felt much like eating, but today I am ravenous. Hopefully this is a sign that things are improving. It hasn’t been an utterly debilitating variety of sick, but I’ve felt pretty listless and my stomach has been tetchy.

Some comments on recent books:

Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix
I’d been curious about these books for a long time, but worried that they might be overly gothy on account of their subject matter. They turned out to be quite enjoyable. I had the good fortune to find unabridged audio versions narrated by Tim Curry. His voice for Moggett, a cat, was especially good. Sabriel is good and can function just fine as a stand-alone. Lirael, the second book, goes a little deeper into the title character’s personality and motivation, and just might be my favorite of the lot. It ends on a cliffhangery note. Abhorsen picks up precisely where Lirael left off and is just action, action, action until the very end, when things get more character driven again. I really felt like it wasn’t a book in its own right, but was just the second hunk of Lirael that got chopped off when someone decided it was too long.

I kept thinking that it might be rather dull to be physically reading this series at times, but the narration kept me entertained, and my complaints are few. Therefore, it’s recommended, but snag the audio if you can. My library had them all, and this town doesn’t even begin to be cosmopolitan, so I bet others will, too.

Daisy Miller by Henry James
What a weird little book. The moral seems rather ridiculous by today’s standards and is delivered by the sledgehammer method, making the end particularly silly. I guess I liked it alright. It was short, at least.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Rebecca rocks. There’s so much going on here I can’t really describe, but you’ve got a very cinemagraphic style of writing, a mysterious ex-wife named Rebecca, a meek and shy second wife who is occasionally very annoying, a creepy housekeeper, a moody older man, etc. If you haven’t read or seen it, you should. My main gripe is with the protagonist sometimes being very dumb (I saw one big plot twist coming miles away), but some of the other turns are genuine surprises, and just overall, the sense of suspense is finely maintained. Next on the list for me by du Maurier—Jamaica Inn. It’s the other of her novels that was made into a movie by Hitchcock. She also wrote the short story that inspired The Birds. Betcha didn’t know that!