A Silent Voice

by Yoshitoki Ooima

Story summary: From the description of the first volume on Goodreads:
"Shoya is a bully. When Shoko, a girl who can’t hear, enters his elementary school class, she becomes their favorite target, and Shoya and his friends goad each other into devising new tortures for her. But the children’s cruelty goes too far. Shoko is forced to leave the school, and Shoya ends up shouldering all the blame. Six years later, the two meet again. Can Shoya make up for his past mistakes, or is it too late?"

Why You Will Like This Series:

• Complex people and relationships--messy like real life.
• Slow growth in friendship, self-respect, courage, and living.
• The realistic emotions the art managed to portray staggered me sometimes.
• The romance was pretty much the cutest thing ever, though not as important as even I wanted it to be.
• With only seven volumes, it's a nice and short and manageable read, and didn't continue past it's expiry date (unlike many series).

And Why You Might Not:

• This IS manga. A lot of people I know find it difficult enough to read normal graphic novels, let alone ones structured backwards to match the original language's format.
• I could see this being triggering to people who've struggled with depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and the like.
• The ending is more open-ended than many people liked. (Not totally sure what I think of it myself.)

Durarara!!

by Ryohgo Narita

Story summary: Last unfinished book I read, I used the Goodreads description because I hadn't finished the book and so couldn't actually summarize it. This time I don't have that excuse, because I know the story in fairly good detail, having devoured the anime and manga versions. But I like the Goodreads summary and I'm behind on reviews and I'm super lazy, so here goes:

"The Ikebukuro district in Tokyo is full of interesting people. A boy longing for the extraordinary. A hotheaded punk. An airheaded pseudo stalker. An information broker who works for kicks. An underground doctor who specializes in truly desperate patients. A high school student infatuated with a monster. And a headless rider on a pitch-black motorcycle. Their story may not be a heartwarming one, but as it turns out, even weirdos like these sometimes fall in love.
There's no shortage of bizarre characters in Ikebukuro--read the light novel series that started the anime and manga phenomenon!"

Travel Reading Part 6

For the last three months, I've been gone, walking across Canada with a group called Crossroads Pro-Life. I was very, very busy, but I did manage to read a few books. Blogging about them was a different story, however. So it's been so long now since I read many of them, that I thought I could do travel posts like I did last summer, and just write a couple sentences for each book.
So here goes the second Crossroads multi-review post:

"Rome Sweet Home" by Scott and Kimberly Hahn
Grade: 4 stars
For me, being a Catholic who grew up on Scott Hahn and Protestant conversion stories, there was nothing very new in this book. Still, it was well written, and it was interesting to read something that was so personal. It showed the same story from both Scott's and Kimberly's point of view, which sometimes I found slightly repetitive and sometimes I found fascinating.




"Sword Art Online 1: Aincrad" by Reki Kawahara
Grade: 2 1/2 stars
This is a Japanese light novel, and thus is (surprise, surprise) rather on the light side. Apparently there are a number of sides stories that used to be included online, and are also in the anime. I think those scenes would have filled this out a little more and made it more enjoyable. I generally have a rule that if a manga came before an anime, I have to read it before watching it. I do not have the same rule with light novels, and this is partly why. The anime has more depth and more story. (I think in the future I will try to watch the animes first, and if I really enjoy it, will read the light novels to get a different perspective on the characters.) But there was some cool stuff in here. Interesting ideas about living a video game.

"The Icebound Land" by John Flanagan
Grade: 2 1/2 stars
Third book in the Ranger's Apprentice series, after The Ruins of Gorlan and The Burning Bridge. I found this one slightly slower than the first two, but it may have been my mood at the time. And there was an awesome section with Horace, which I was very happy to see. Hopefully he continues to grow more and more awesome.




"The Last Guardian of Everness" by John C. Wright
Grade: 4 stars
A fantasy novel with a dream world, many mythological references, a rising and terrible evil, betrayal and disguise and mistaken identities. The imagery was fantastic, and was definitely my favourite part. But I liked almost the whole cast of characters, who were mostly interestingly nuanced. As a note, because I like to keep track of these things, my favourite character was Peter, although Azrael was quite fascinating too (the part where he rides home with a certain character was hilarious).


"Mists of Everness" by John C. Wright
Grade: 3 1/2 stars
Technically I finished this after my summer travelling, but it's the sequel to The Last Guardian of Everness, so I thought I'd stick in in the same post. These two books were basically two halves of the same story, not a book and its sequel (sort of like the three LotR books are really just one book). However, I didn't actually like this one quite as much as the first. It seemed a little more disjointed, plot-wise, than the first. It was still very enjoyable, however. I loved when the characters all got their particular weapons and were using them like bosses. Also, John C. Wright is Catholic, and I could see some themes that resonated with me because of this. I'm definitely going to try out more of his books (especially his scifi, which is what he's most known for).

Fullmetal Alchemist

written and illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa

Grade: 4 1/2 stars
Story summary: Far too complicated to explain the whole thing. The gist of it is, there are two brothers who lost all or parts of their bodies through a dangerous alchemy experiment, and now they're searching for the philosopher's stone to help them get their bodies back. Also there are anthropomorphic personifications of the seven deadly sins, political intrigue and military overthrows, centuries-long plots, and really funny bonus strips at the back of each volume.

Thoughts: The plot! Wowee. I don't want to spoil too much about the plot details, but it seemed to me to be one of the more well-plotted series I've seen (including TV series). As far as I could tell, most of the questions were answered by the end. All the little things you'd forgotten about popped up again near the end and clicked with everything else.

And the characters! The main relationship of the series is the two brothers, Edward and Alphonse, which I love. Sibling relationships are always my favourite. Colonel Mustang is just one of the coolest people ever, and I'm thinking of writing a Top Ten (Or So) list of people associated with fire, mostly so he can be on it (with Zuko from A:TLA). Unlike Death Note, there are tons of great female characters as well. My favourite would Lt. Hawkeye. In fact, all the military characters were great, and I greatly appreciated the nuanced take on the military. They tend to be either decidedly the good guys or the bad guys in most things, while here they were very, very flawed good guys who contrasted nicely with the central brother characters. Here are the best of them, in their cool blue uniforms:

Whatever you do, by the way, don't just read the first volume and think, "Ah, this review was all nonsense," and never pick up the second volume. The first volume was by far my least favourite, and didn't seem to have much to do with the rest of the series.

Also, like Death Note, there is some philosophical weirdness, especially at the end. I might not bother with mentioning it, except that it centres around one of my top theological pet peeves. There is this view of God, which pops up all over the place, as essentially a creature--someone or something inside of creation that whose powers can be grasped and taken. Totally non-transcendent. Anyway, I can go on about this for ages, but I won't, because it only comes up in a few small places and didn't really detract from my reading pleasure. (However, you can read this article for clarification on what exactly I mean, if you want.)

Now, for your pleasure, the seven deadly sins incarnate. SPOILER ALERT FOR THIS PICTURE!!! (I hope it isn't already too late... Try to forget what you saw, ok? I know I shouldn't have put it up in the first place if I was going to say all this, but I couldn't help it! It was such a good picture! And they're so cool!)

Death Note: Another Note

by Nisioisin

Grade: 2 1/2 stars
Story summary: An FBI agent on suspension, Naomi Misora, is called upon by the great detective "L" to help solve an unusual series of murders. A prequel of sorts to the manga series Death Note.

Thoughts: The worst thing about this book was the stupid names. Perhaps Nisiosin is not familiar with American culture? Because the majority of the people had names like "Beyond Birthday" and "Quarter Queen" and one of the worst: "Backyard Bottomslash". This was supposed to be a mostly serious story, but every time someone's name was mentioned, it completely took me out of the story.

Otherwise it was quite good, I suppose. It was interesting to get more insight into L's past and character. The mystery was not bad--I didn't actually guess the answer. Most reviews I've read seem to have praised it fairly highly, so it's hard to tell whether my lack of great interest is purely a result of the terrible distraction caused by the names.

Death Note

written by Tsugumi Ohba
illustrated by Takeshi Obata

Grade: 5 stars

For reasons that are still rather vague and unformed in my mind, I do not count graphic novels/manga/comic books when numbering the books I read each year. But it occurred to me for the first time the other day that this wouldn't necessarily stop me from reviewing them. So here goes.

Death Note is one of the coolest series I've read in a long time, and I'm including non-graphic series as well. It contains many of my favourite tropes: young, evil geniuses; Machiavellian characters; long battles of wits. What more could I ask for?

It's basically about a long series of mind games between Light Yagami, a boy who obtains the power to kill people by writing their names in a notebook (the Death Note of the title), and a young genius detective called simply "L". Light slowly gets more corrupted by the power of the Death Note, and L slowly closes in on him. And just when you think you might understand someone's plan, it turns out there was a whole other level going on above that the whole time. Awesome stuff.

Special praise also goes to the artist, Takeshi Obata. He's what got me into manga in the first place, with Hikaru no Go. His style is not as frantically busy as some manga tend to be, and a series as dark as this needs some realism in its art.

My main criticism is a lack of interesting girls. Any girls that did appear tended to be rather stupid, and have no purposes other than being in love with Light, and thus getting rather horribly used by him. The lack of good female characters did mean that there was no hackneyed Romance, which was nice. But I would also very much like some girls to add to my Evil Child Geniuses list someday.

It also gets into slightly weird philosophy by the end of it. Mostly this wasn't the focus of the story, though, so I was able to ignore it.