Book Logging
Aug. 30th, 2008 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckI'm going to try to catch up on book logging today. Otherwise, I'll forget everything about all the manga I read this week. I'm sure I've forgotten a lot of what I meant to say already.
As usual, discussion is welcome.
Riordan, Rick. Sea of Monsters - This is the second Percy Jackson book. The main character manages to be amazingly cheerful about the dreadful things going on around him. This book is set nearly a year after the first one. The camp that provides training and sanctuary for the half-mortal offspring of the gods is under attack to the point that the kids are in nearly constant battle. There's only one thing that can save the camp-- the Golden Fleece.
Retrieving that isn't Percy's quest. Instead, he's trying to find his friend, Grover, who's missing and who Percy is certain is in extreme danger. Finding Grover simply happens to take him and Annabeth in the same direction as the quest for the Fleece. They run into quite a few monsters and other dangers that those familiar with Greek mythology will recognize.
Still fun. I have a hold on the next volume in the series.
Rising Stars of Manga 6 - An anthology is an anthology is an anthology. I can't say that I found any of these shorts particularly memorable. There were one or two that were definitely not in styles that I liked much, but even they weren't awful.
Sands, Lynsey. Love Is Blind - This is a Regency romance. I picked it up at the library after reading a preview. The heroine is nearly blind without her glasses, and her step-mother refuses to let her wear them. The heroine has disaster after disaster (most of them, thankfully, before the narrative starts or I'd not have been able to read it) due to her inability to see until almost noone will spend time near her.
Enter the hero, a man with facial scarring who finds the idea of an intelligent woman who can't see him well enough to be repelled very appealing. They fall for each other fast. The step-mother stands in the way. More accidents happen, leading the hero to guess that someone is trying to kill the heroine. There is much angst on both sides about glasses because he dreads her getting them and seeing him and she dreads him seeing her wearing them because she can tell he dislikes the idea but misunderstands why.
Overall, the story wasn't bad. I'm not going to remember it ten years from now, but I don't regret it as traveling reading.
Sugar Sugar Rune 1 - My reaction to this volume is tepid at best. I'll read more because the library has it, so if it improves, I'll find out, but this volume was... Yeah. Two witch girls are candidates for the position of queen. They come to the human world to compete against each other to see which can gather the most power. Power comes from taking human emotions that the witch has inspired. Humans survive this and continue to have emotions and generate more power, but witches who lose their 'hearts' in the same way die.
There's some stuff with the ways that witch culture differs from human culture. The ways of inspiring love are radically different, so the positions of the two candidates reverse from what they expected. One is sweet and rather passive and collects crushes from the boys around her very rapidly. The other is abrasive and nasty and appalled to discover that human boys don't find that appealing the way that boys in her own world do.
There are some hints that the two witches are going to find collecting 'hearts' harder than they expect for reasons that they haven't yet understood. Taking a heart means that the one who loses it loses the emotion involved. Someone who's been a friend suddenly is barely even indifferent so that the relationship starts from nothing at all. There's also a villain who wants to get the witch's hearts. What will happen with him, who knows?
To Terra 3 - I couldn't finish this one. The manga-ka is the same who did Andromeda Stories, and I was suspicious that I'd find another rocks-fall-everybody-dies ending, so I peeked. It's not quite that bad, but it's close. She seems to like having characters who're obsessed and who destroy themselves and others through that. She also seems to like having humans enslaved by machines and then die as a result of trying to get free.
I didn't actually like any of the characters. I think that I could have if the story had been slanted differently or if any of the characters got enough space to feel real. I'm still not entirely sure why some of them made the choices they did, and I don't think reading the middle of the volume would have helped-- If I'm reading the signs correctly, the middle was going to build destruction with community after community going down, and lots of individuals whose names I couldn't remember dying.
Vampire Game 14-15 - I lost track of what was going on in the last volume. I'm not sure if that was a problem with me and my attention or if it was a flaw in the volume. I think that the last few volumes either needed to be stretched out or to be compressed. I lost track of what some people actually wanted or were trying to accomplish.
Vampire Knight 4 - Do I have to try to follow the plot? Isn't it enough that I recognize that we have here angst and character torture? It's very pretty but loses my attention very rapidly. It's kind of like angst flavored cotton candy. It's not even quite a memory after I'm done reading.
Walden, Mark. H.I.V.E. The Overlord Protocol - This was a fun ride and strong follow up to the first book in the series. I still find it disconcerting to read a kid's book in which all of the adults embrace being evil and are trying to educate the kids to be ruthless criminals. This volume introduced some more hints that there's a bigger arc going on but didn't advance it far. I think that it's a case of assembling pieces for later. I hope so.
Still recommended.
Wallflower 5 - Parents? She has parents? Well, of course, she does, but... I enjoyed the backstory about the four guys, too. It was nice to see a bit about how they all came to live there and how they interacted before v.1.
Wallflower 6 - I keep wanting to see Sunako perceive the people around her as people. I think that's part of wanting to see her grow up a bit. I don't want her to lose her interests and preferences, but a lot of the story seems to involve her wandering through a world that only vaguely intersects with that inhabited by the other characters. Her moments of power come when she sees both worlds and when she chooses to protect the people and things she cares about.
Wild Adapter 4 - I foresee much police trouble in the future for the two main characters. I can't see this particular detective giving up. Beyond that, I feel sort of like I'm treading water on this series. I haven't really connected with the characters or the story yet, and the amount of violence and sex puts me off a bit. I'll be continuing to read because I trust the manga-ka and because the library has the series, but I'm not fully engaged.
X/1999 14 - Every time I read any bit of this series, it strikes me how utterly screwed Kamui and his buddies are. Defending a limited number of fixed location items from destruction with a very limited number of people is a losing proposition. Doing it when the opposition has no reason to avoid collateral damage is utterly impossible.
I should sit down and make myself read v.15-17 (which I own) rapidly. I've forgotten who many of the supporting characters are and so don't care at all about their dilemmas and desires. Still, it's hard to make myself move forward when I know there's no resolution. Incomplete series with strong Plot and heavy angst are frustrating like that. (A typo I made in the title while starting this entry made it look rather like a tax form number. That made me laugh. I wonder what an X/1099 would be?)
Yakitate!! Japan 1-2 - I'm enjoying this series simply for the vicarious pleasure of all the bread. I love good bread, and this, being imaginary, can easily be the best bread ever. There's also something a bit cracked about passionate, competitive bread making. The hero has the goal of creating a form of bread that is uniquely Japanese and delicious, something that people will love to eat. He's a genius at baking bread but knows nothing at all about the technical terminology of baking or of bread.
I'm going to try to make Scott read this one.
Yurara 3-4 - I kept thinking that the characters looked wrong. I've no idea why. It must have to do with reading so many different manga all at once. My brain was probably mixing up these characters with the characters in another manga. I also had trouble when the art reversed so that the lines were white on black. It confused me enough that I often wasn't sure who was in the panel.
I'm wishing for a story that didn't involve obsession with who's in love with who. I kept wanting to smack the characters and then either make them never see each other again or lock them in a room together until they all talk sensibly. I'd like to see something more about dealing with evil spirits and what it takes to face them. Volume 4 used spirits/ghosts mostly as gags, and it annoyed me.
As usual, discussion is welcome.
Riordan, Rick. Sea of Monsters - This is the second Percy Jackson book. The main character manages to be amazingly cheerful about the dreadful things going on around him. This book is set nearly a year after the first one. The camp that provides training and sanctuary for the half-mortal offspring of the gods is under attack to the point that the kids are in nearly constant battle. There's only one thing that can save the camp-- the Golden Fleece.
Retrieving that isn't Percy's quest. Instead, he's trying to find his friend, Grover, who's missing and who Percy is certain is in extreme danger. Finding Grover simply happens to take him and Annabeth in the same direction as the quest for the Fleece. They run into quite a few monsters and other dangers that those familiar with Greek mythology will recognize.
Still fun. I have a hold on the next volume in the series.
Rising Stars of Manga 6 - An anthology is an anthology is an anthology. I can't say that I found any of these shorts particularly memorable. There were one or two that were definitely not in styles that I liked much, but even they weren't awful.
Sands, Lynsey. Love Is Blind - This is a Regency romance. I picked it up at the library after reading a preview. The heroine is nearly blind without her glasses, and her step-mother refuses to let her wear them. The heroine has disaster after disaster (most of them, thankfully, before the narrative starts or I'd not have been able to read it) due to her inability to see until almost noone will spend time near her.
Enter the hero, a man with facial scarring who finds the idea of an intelligent woman who can't see him well enough to be repelled very appealing. They fall for each other fast. The step-mother stands in the way. More accidents happen, leading the hero to guess that someone is trying to kill the heroine. There is much angst on both sides about glasses because he dreads her getting them and seeing him and she dreads him seeing her wearing them because she can tell he dislikes the idea but misunderstands why.
Overall, the story wasn't bad. I'm not going to remember it ten years from now, but I don't regret it as traveling reading.
Sugar Sugar Rune 1 - My reaction to this volume is tepid at best. I'll read more because the library has it, so if it improves, I'll find out, but this volume was... Yeah. Two witch girls are candidates for the position of queen. They come to the human world to compete against each other to see which can gather the most power. Power comes from taking human emotions that the witch has inspired. Humans survive this and continue to have emotions and generate more power, but witches who lose their 'hearts' in the same way die.
There's some stuff with the ways that witch culture differs from human culture. The ways of inspiring love are radically different, so the positions of the two candidates reverse from what they expected. One is sweet and rather passive and collects crushes from the boys around her very rapidly. The other is abrasive and nasty and appalled to discover that human boys don't find that appealing the way that boys in her own world do.
There are some hints that the two witches are going to find collecting 'hearts' harder than they expect for reasons that they haven't yet understood. Taking a heart means that the one who loses it loses the emotion involved. Someone who's been a friend suddenly is barely even indifferent so that the relationship starts from nothing at all. There's also a villain who wants to get the witch's hearts. What will happen with him, who knows?
To Terra 3 - I couldn't finish this one. The manga-ka is the same who did Andromeda Stories, and I was suspicious that I'd find another rocks-fall-everybody-dies ending, so I peeked. It's not quite that bad, but it's close. She seems to like having characters who're obsessed and who destroy themselves and others through that. She also seems to like having humans enslaved by machines and then die as a result of trying to get free.
I didn't actually like any of the characters. I think that I could have if the story had been slanted differently or if any of the characters got enough space to feel real. I'm still not entirely sure why some of them made the choices they did, and I don't think reading the middle of the volume would have helped-- If I'm reading the signs correctly, the middle was going to build destruction with community after community going down, and lots of individuals whose names I couldn't remember dying.
Vampire Game 14-15 - I lost track of what was going on in the last volume. I'm not sure if that was a problem with me and my attention or if it was a flaw in the volume. I think that the last few volumes either needed to be stretched out or to be compressed. I lost track of what some people actually wanted or were trying to accomplish.
Vampire Knight 4 - Do I have to try to follow the plot? Isn't it enough that I recognize that we have here angst and character torture? It's very pretty but loses my attention very rapidly. It's kind of like angst flavored cotton candy. It's not even quite a memory after I'm done reading.
Walden, Mark. H.I.V.E. The Overlord Protocol - This was a fun ride and strong follow up to the first book in the series. I still find it disconcerting to read a kid's book in which all of the adults embrace being evil and are trying to educate the kids to be ruthless criminals. This volume introduced some more hints that there's a bigger arc going on but didn't advance it far. I think that it's a case of assembling pieces for later. I hope so.
Still recommended.
Wallflower 5 - Parents? She has parents? Well, of course, she does, but... I enjoyed the backstory about the four guys, too. It was nice to see a bit about how they all came to live there and how they interacted before v.1.
Wallflower 6 - I keep wanting to see Sunako perceive the people around her as people. I think that's part of wanting to see her grow up a bit. I don't want her to lose her interests and preferences, but a lot of the story seems to involve her wandering through a world that only vaguely intersects with that inhabited by the other characters. Her moments of power come when she sees both worlds and when she chooses to protect the people and things she cares about.
Wild Adapter 4 - I foresee much police trouble in the future for the two main characters. I can't see this particular detective giving up. Beyond that, I feel sort of like I'm treading water on this series. I haven't really connected with the characters or the story yet, and the amount of violence and sex puts me off a bit. I'll be continuing to read because I trust the manga-ka and because the library has the series, but I'm not fully engaged.
X/1999 14 - Every time I read any bit of this series, it strikes me how utterly screwed Kamui and his buddies are. Defending a limited number of fixed location items from destruction with a very limited number of people is a losing proposition. Doing it when the opposition has no reason to avoid collateral damage is utterly impossible.
I should sit down and make myself read v.15-17 (which I own) rapidly. I've forgotten who many of the supporting characters are and so don't care at all about their dilemmas and desires. Still, it's hard to make myself move forward when I know there's no resolution. Incomplete series with strong Plot and heavy angst are frustrating like that. (A typo I made in the title while starting this entry made it look rather like a tax form number. That made me laugh. I wonder what an X/1099 would be?)
Yakitate!! Japan 1-2 - I'm enjoying this series simply for the vicarious pleasure of all the bread. I love good bread, and this, being imaginary, can easily be the best bread ever. There's also something a bit cracked about passionate, competitive bread making. The hero has the goal of creating a form of bread that is uniquely Japanese and delicious, something that people will love to eat. He's a genius at baking bread but knows nothing at all about the technical terminology of baking or of bread.
I'm going to try to make Scott read this one.
Yurara 3-4 - I kept thinking that the characters looked wrong. I've no idea why. It must have to do with reading so many different manga all at once. My brain was probably mixing up these characters with the characters in another manga. I also had trouble when the art reversed so that the lines were white on black. It confused me enough that I often wasn't sure who was in the panel.
I'm wishing for a story that didn't involve obsession with who's in love with who. I kept wanting to smack the characters and then either make them never see each other again or lock them in a room together until they all talk sensibly. I'd like to see something more about dealing with evil spirits and what it takes to face them. Volume 4 used spirits/ghosts mostly as gags, and it annoyed me.
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Date: 2008-08-30 10:38 pm (UTC)The Seven Dragons of the IRS vs. the Seven CPAs! ;D
I love the premise of Yakitate! Japan, too, but I haven't got around to reading it yet.