Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Blog

Fushigi Yûgi 2 by Yuu Watase: B

by

Book Description:
During a pilgrimage to the oracle Taitsukun, Miaka is trapped inside a cursed mirror while her evil reflection goes free! Can Tamahome, Hotohori, and Nuriko save the real Miaka? Can Yui, now back in the real world, help her missing friend come home? When Miaka does make her way back to Tokyo, things are not as expected.

Review:
There once was a twit named Miaka,
Personification of “baka.”
For some unknown reason,
The men find her pleasin’.
Maybe the other chicks in Konan could use some Binaca.

Poetic meter? Piffle. *Waves hand dismissively.*

I heart Nuriko in this volume. I normally like Hotohori, but he’s pretty dumb in this one, even if he doesn’t fall for the mirror Miaka trick. I think I’m just generally irritated with this phase of the story, because it seems so vague with the going home and then coming back and working to get home again and then coming back. Just get on with finding the other constellations, already!

One original element that I thought was cute are the little parodies of the angsty drama moments included in this volume. It gives the impression that Watase is fully aware of how silly and over the top this manga is and has a lot of fun spoofing it herself.

There is plenty of stuff to snicker or eyeroll over in this volume, yet regardless of whether it’s intentional, it’s still entertaining. For all its faults, I’m in for the long haul.

The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner: A+

by

From the front flap:
There is a new king in Attolia. Attolia’s barons seethe with resentment, the Mede emperor is returning to the attack, and the king is surrounded by the subtle and dangerous intrigue of the Attolian court.

When a naive young guard expresses his contempt for the king in no uncertain terms, he is dragged into the center of the political maelstrom. Like the king, he cannot escape the difficulties he makes for himself. Poor Costis knows he is the victim of the king’s caprice, but he discovers a reluctant sympathy for the man as he watches the newly crowned king struggle against his fate.

Review:
Eugenides is being his usual brilliant, lazy, bored, self-mocking, others-mocking, and occasionally hotheaded self in this book. He’s such a great character; I could read a whole book just about him reacting to things. In fact, in the first hundred pages, there isn’t a lot of plot, just setting the scene of life at the Attolian court and how the also likable Costis has been snagged into the service of the king. “Poor Costis,” indeed.

And then the intrigue starts, and the character development, and the little revelations behind what the public perceives and… it’s just so well done! It’s hard to describe too much, as I am determined to avoid spoilers.

I’ve enjoyed every book in this series, but it’s been this one that’s really cemented me as a devotee and left me impatiently awaiting Gen’s future exploits. Each has been better than the last, but The King of Attolia is perfect. Do yourself a favor and read these books!

Searching for Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede: B+

by

From the back cover:
The cast: an un-ordinary king, and an extraordinary princess, a couple of kooky giants, an overzealous magician, a loyal and helpful witch, and a host of evil and dangerous wizards.

The instruments: a broken-down magic carpet, a leaking magical sword, and a few buckets of soapy lemon water.

The problem: dragon-napping and magic-stealing.

And so the story begins, one fine day while King Mendanbar is taking a casual stroll through the Enchanted Forest…

Review:
It’s interesting that the plot can have some glaring “duh, obvious” elements (the identity of the villains, who Mendanbar will eventually marry, etc.) and yet function perfectly well. I think it’s because it doesn’t hinge on those elements for its success. They’re there, but you’re not expected to be surprised by any of them. Overall, I quite liked Searching for Dragons, but not as much as the first in the series. This is mainly due to the following:

1) It’s a bit repetitive. Here’s what Cimorene and Mendanbar do over and over: Journey a little bit, encounter a fairy tale denizen who behaves a little like his ilk typically do in fairy tales but with a twist, listen to his tale of woe, dispense advice that solves all his problems in an instant, move on, journey a little bit, etc. Maybe I was supposed to appreciate the twists more, but they were only mildly sort of cute, and I was much more interested in the main plot than these side diversions, even if they ultimately helped to further the main story along.

2) Telemain. I think Wrede’s take on magicians is interesting. They’re sort of magic nerds or mechanics, who get into exactly how the magic functions and can diagnose why things are going wrong. Interesting concept aside, Telemain himself is incredibly annoying. Probably, he is more tolerable in print, but in this audio version, he has the most nasally, grating voice that I have ever heard. It literally made me cringe every time he spoke.

Still a worthy series and pleasantly diverting, but I hope for a little change-up from “the villains from book one are behind it all again, surprise” business in the next one.

Fushigi Yûgi 1 by Yuu Watase: B+

by

Book description:
Miaka Yuuki is an ordinary junior-high student who is suddenly whisked away into the world of a book, The Universe of the Four Gods. In a land reminiscent of ancient China, she becomes the priestess of the god Suzaku, and is charged with finding all seven of her Celestial-Warrior protectors, including dashing mercenary Tamahome and wannabe empress Nuriko. Only then can Miaka summon the power of the god Suzaku, find her true love, and get home safely.

Review:
Fushigi Yûgi was the first shoujo anime I ever saw, and the first with rampant bishounen and gender fun, etc. So, even though it has its flaws, I’m still fond of it. It’s been a while since I saw the series, so I decided to revisit it in manga form.

The art style surprised me. I’ve read a couple of Watase’s later things, and this earlier style is actually reminiscent of Rumiko Takahashi in spots. I prefer it to her later, more stylized approach. It’s more comical and the characters don’t look as similar.

Miaka is certainly just as stupid as I remembered, and has already done quite a few dumb things and fainted a few times for incredibly goofy reasons. Tamahome… doesn’t… love me?! *swoon* Three of her Celestial Warriors are introduced here, found essentially under her nose: Tamahome, Hotohori, and Nuriko. I’m definitely reading more for these side characters, the latter two more so than Tamahome. He doesn’t really do much for me. I do like the story, and the manga seems to be a little clearer on certain elements of the logistics involved.

Fushigi Yûgi is a shoujo classic, but is also recommended if one simply wants a bit of fun fantasy.

Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede: A

by

From the back cover:
Take one bored princess. Make her the seventh daughter in a very proper royal family. Have her run away.

Add one powerful, fascinating, dangerous dragon.

Princess Cimorene has never met anyone (or anything) like the dragon Kazul. But then, she’s never met a witch, a jinn, a death-dealing talking bird, or a stone prince either.

Princess Cimorene ran away to find some excitement.

She’s found plenty.

Review:
I’ve read a lot of YA Fantasy featuring unconventional or improper princess heroines, and at first Cimorene seemed like just another one of them, but ended up distinguishing herself from the others. Alianora is also amusing. The unabridged audio I listened to had different voices for the different characters, and hers was especially good. This also enabled them to do a neat trick – they could overlap lines of dialogue to portray times when people speak simultaneously or interrupt. It was nifty!

The plot of the book is clever, and more especially than that – well explained. I loved that characters were always explaining to others exactly what happened, and that the plot didn’t hinge on misunderstandings or people deciding to stay quiet for no discernible reason. That’s what you do when you have a big problem – give all the facts to everyone to mull over! The end result was that almost all behavior in the book was not only believable, it was logical. There weren’t any moments where I wanted to smack anyone.

I also really liked the portrayal of the dragons in the book, especially their interesting take on gender roles. There was some great voice acting work for the dragons, too, especially in the scene where Kazul has guests for dinner, so if you ever listen to it, remember that I said the voice of the “thin dragon” rocked. This reminds me that if I were pressed to voice a complaint, it’d be that the stone prince doesn’t get named. Hopefully he’ll appear in later books and it will be revealed.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson: A-

by

From the back cover:
From her first moment at Merryweather High, MJSordino knows she’s an outcast. She busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops—a major infraction in high-school society—so her old friends won’t talk to her, and people she doesn’t know glare at her. She retreats into her head, where the lies and hypocrisies of high school stand in stark relief to her own silence, making her all the more mute. But it’s not so comfortable in her head, either—there’s something banging around in there that she doesn’t want to think about. Try as she might to avoid it, it won’t go away, until there is a painful confrontation. Once that happens, she can’t be silent—she must speak the truth.

Review:
Speak does an excellent job capturing the voice of a clever, angsty ninth grader. A lot of the things she says (it’s first person, but whether it’s a journal isn’t clear) are overly melodramatic, and sound much like the sort of symbolic crap that I once wrote in my journal. This is occasionally a little annoying, but since the same could be said about most ninth graders, it worked for me. I listened to an unabridged audio version. The girl who read it, Mandy Siegfried, was awesome. Very authentic voice for a fourteen-year-old, and she (or someone) even made up tunes for the little snippets of the school cheers that are included, which was amusing.

It’s not a real surprise what’s happened to MJ, but even so—when the details are finally revealed, they still carry impact. Despite the blurb up there about the painful confrontation being the catalyst, I found her change to be a gradual one, which I liked, so there wasn’t exactly one single event I could point to that brought about an end to her silence. Although MJ’s muteness and mental retreating are frustrating, the wry analysis of high school and her other various experiences makes her a likable character. Now that it’s over, I find that I’ll actually miss hearing her. Kind of ironic, given the whole point of the thing.

Speak is a Printz Honor book. It’s good. Check it out.

Ouran High School Host Club 2 by Bisco Hatori: A-

by

From the back cover:
The school-wide physical exam has thrown the members of the Host Club for a loop. How can the doctor not discover that Haruhi is a girl?! And once the female customers learn the truth, Haruhi can kiss her job goodbye. But then life at the club will be unbearably boring if she leaves! So the guys wrack their brains for a solution…

Review:
This volume corresponds with episodes 3 and 5-7 of the anime. I thought some bits of 7 might’ve been anime-only filler, buuuut turns out they weren’t. I didn’t like this volume quite as much as the first, because it felt like it was getting a little gimmicky. I don’t like manga where things like panda mecha or cages or alligators just randomly appear out of nowhere. The interesting characters and art that’s beautiful and cute in just the right proportion make me a little more forgiving in Ouran’s case, but I hope it doesn’t become a trend.

I continue to appreciate the moments where Tamaki succeeds in engineering happiness for someone the club has encountered, and especially enjoy seeing Haruhi being stunned by Tamaki’s brief flashes of perceptive kindness. “I like good deeds,” one of his thought bubbles declares, as he smilingly observes another success. I like Haruhi and Mori a lot, but at this point, Tamaki is my favorite character. I hope to see more insight and depth for him in the future.

Haunted by Jeff Mariotte: C-

by

From the back cover:
Cordelia’s getting her first big break—as a contestant on yet another twist on “reality programming.” The catch? She has to spend five days and four nights in a so-called haunted house. Not a problem for a girl who lives with a ghost and works with a vampire (and even managed to graduate from Sunnydale High School in one piece). She’s a shoo-in.

But there may be more going on behind the scenes than Cordy anticipated. On her first night, she’s wracked with a vision—and it’s of one of the applicants who didn’t make the final cut. Through subtle on-air clue-dropping, she manages to communicate the scenario to Angel and Co., who are instantly on the case. But as Angel, Wesley, and Gunn seek the missing actress, paranormal activity in the house heats up. Once Wolfram & Hart is added to the mix, Cordelia has to wonder which she would rather hold onto—her ticket to certain stardom… or her life…

Review:
Haunted takes place during the second season of Angel, some time after the episode “The Thin Dead Line.” Y’know, the one with the zombie cops. That’s actually episode 14, so towards the end of that season, after all the Darla angst.

This book is pretty freakin’ lame and boring. It features Cordelia, and so I mistakenly thought it might be fun, and now I’m bummed that I’d saved this one for last. It only cements my decision to lay off the Angel books for a while. The B plot mystery, regarding the applicant who didn’t make the cut who Cordelia has a vision about, is completely dumb. By page 113, it’s abundantly clear what is going on. Sustaining interest in it for 200 more pages is not possible. Trudge would be an apt description of my progress through these segments. How plots A and B ultimately intertwine is the epitome of flimsy.

So, in addition to a lackluster story, the editing is pretty horrid, too! There’s one scene in particular, where six contestants are left in the haunted house. The book names them. There are clearly six. Then the host says, “There are five of you…” And then he reads the results of the eviction vote and they total seven! No sneaky ghost has cast a vote, either, because no one reacts to the incorrect tally. In another scene, when only three contestants are left, Cordelia’s lounging on a couch while ‘several of the other contestants’ are hanging around, too. Eh? Two does not constitute several, and it would still be weird if they’d said ‘a couple of the other’ because these two have been referred to by name many times before and are again in the next paragraph. It’s like saying ‘Harry encountered a three-headed-dog and a couple of other students were there, too.’

The writing’s not as good as the others by Mariotte, either. Some thoughts and dialogue don’t seem entirely in character, nothing actually amusing happens… I could go more in depth, but enduring ’til the end has sapped my strength. I’m eager to put this one behind me.

Hikaru no Go 7 by Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata: A

by

From the back cover:
Hikaru is horrified to find that he’s losing all of his games at the insei school! The Young Lions Tournament is just three months away, and the insei who qualify will play against rookie pros, including Akira. Hikaru sees his chance to impress his rival, but can he turn his losing streak around in time?

Review:
It’s hard to articulate why I love this series so much, but I really do. The plot is not a new one in shounen manga, but the characters are so endearing, and the art so great, that it still feels fresh. Hikaru is your typical boy, thoughtless at times, but still with the occasional sweet moment when he is determined to do something good for Sai. And, of course, Sai could not be prettier and/or cuter. I particularly like when all that’s in his thought bubble is a little heart.

It’s also pretty unique how far we’ve progressed so far. A little over a year has passed since Hikaru started playing, several months are covered in this volume alone, and I think the story is somewhere over the halfway point of the anime series. With 16 volumes after this one, it makes me think there’s tons of story that wasn’t animated, and since I have remained unspoiled on it, it’s quite a lovely prospect.

In this volume, I liked that Sai is able to diagnose why Hikaru keeps losing, and actually do a bit of instructing that nudges Hikaru’s skill level up some. Plus, the stylized representations of their games as parrying swordplay was a pretty cool way of illustration his progression. The other insei are more interesting than his former clubmates back at his junior high, because they’re better skilled and less worshipful of his abilities, and with this volume, he’s just getting into playing against a couple of characters that I quite like.

Everyone needs to read a bit of shounen tournament-style manga every once in a while, to experience its awesome addictive power. Hikaru no Go would be an excellent choice.

Solitary Man by Jeff Mariotte: B

by

From the back cover:
Widow Mildred Finster is a life-long fan of “cozy” mystery novels. She decides at the tender age of seventy-one that she’d like to become a real private detective. She finds a card for Angel Investigations and thinks the name sounds very sweet. After all, she loves angels. What could be more perfect?

Angel and the gang are hip-deep in their own personal problems, so when Mildred offers her services, they don’t have much time for her. And when a truckload of antiquities from a local mission is stolen, they don’t get too worked up over what they think is a simple theft. But the arrival of some ruthless killers from overseas finally gets the gang’s attention.

Now they are being followed at every turn by a well-meaning old lady, fighting off attacks from poltergeists, and trying to set their personal differences aside to defeat a supernatural foe before a centuries-old mystery reaches its final chapter.

Review:
Yes, another Angel book! I checked out 4 at once, and now they’re all coming due, so I’m hastening to get them read. Solitary Man takes place early in season four, at least after episode six, “Spin the Bottle,” in which the team reverts to their high school personas and Cordelia regains her memories. I think there’s a timeline error, however. In that episode, Wesley’s got some spring-loaded blades up his sleeves, but in Solitary Man, he’s still waiting for them to be delivered. I don’t see why he’d need two sets of these things, so I am assuming they’re the same ones. It seems like an attempt of Mariotte’s to get in an esoteric reference to them in particular, but it doesn’t work with non-amnesiac-Cordelia.

In general, Mariotte writes the Angel crew well. I really liked his analysis about Wes and Lilah’s relationship. It’s never implicitly stated on the show, but I think that he got Wes’ motivations absolutely right. He also does well in showing what Fred and Gunn are each thinking after what happened with her former professor. This is a period in the show where people are keeping a lot to themselves, so it was neat to get some perspective on what they might’ve been thinking. Another thing he does well is describing the action in a scene so that it’s immediately easy to envision it playing out on screen. I find I really like being able to picture exactly how Angel got into the offices of the trucking company, for example.

My only complaint with the writing itself is that Mariotte seems to have a penchant for the lame simile. This also manifested itself in Sanctuary (review). The first example to catch my notice was this little gem: “…her footfall soft as the beat of a butterfly’s wing.” Another: “…with remnants of advertising posters clinging to them like bad memories that can’t be shaken.” I don’t know whether to snicker, groan, or make gagging sounds. Oh, and the spelling of magic with a K abounds. I definitely need to get my hands on some scripts and confirm that Whedon-tachi did not use this variant. I will be so depressed if they did. But Giles didn’t own the Magick Box, did he? No, he did not.

So, good characterization and dialogue aside, the plot of this one is kind of dull. Some artifacts didn’t make it to a mission renovation project, some weird old dude is involved, some comatose park ranger living in a house with a poltergeist is involved, some little old lady follows the crew and gives progress reports to her cat, Pookie. (I am not making this up.) The end was a little dumb, too. Mariotte provides another quick, easy read, enjoyable almost solely for the people populating it, and pretty bleh otherwise.