Something a little different...

I mentioned that I would also be reviewing Manga on here, but I have yet to do so... so, without further ado... my first Manga review!



Honey Hunt
Story and Art done by Miki Aihara

Miki Aihara is the author and illustrator of one of my favorite manga, Hot Gimmick.
She writes something called shojo manga, which essentially are love stories for girls.

I enjoy Miki Aihara's work because often her characters do truly harsh, unpredictable things... motivated by their own twisted, and often taboo desires. Yeah, sure, it's still a love story, and there are certain formulas to be followed, but motivations aren't transparent and there is some mystery involved.

Another thing I love about Miki Aihara is her art style. I LOVE her drawing style.
This is often my main gripe about American comics... that the cover art is beautiful... and the inside art is blah. With Japanese Manga, the person who does the cover art is also the person who does the interior art... so I'm never left feeling cheated in that sense. (I will be reviewing American comics as well, especially American Graphic Novels)

Now, this particular series is only out through volume 5 in the US... so let me give you a brief summary:

Main character Yura lives in the shadow of her parents, a famous actress and a famous musician. She decides she will become a more popular actress than her mother (and her mom is a *real* work of art... serious emotional issues there...) and gets help from her father's agent (her father now lives in America with his mistress), a budding musician who wants to be with her to get closer to her father, the musician's twin brother, who is a Japanese Idol Singer as well as an actor, and a few other random characters.

My main confusion at this point is who this character will end up with. There is what would typically be the 'obvious' choice... but, knowing this author, it doesn't mean it's the choice the main character will make... so the series is still full of mystery and intrigue.

If you want a good, fun love story and AMAZING art, I suggest anything by Miki Aihara, Honey Hunt included!

A Heroin you will love...

I just got finished reading the first series by Maria V. Snyder... and I thought it was brilliant.
You will find the first two of these books in the YA section of the book store, although the content is very adult and I think the entire series could be in the Adult Fantasy section.

The three books, in order, are:

Poison Study
Magic Study
Fire Study

and they follow the life of Yelena, a criminal on death row who is offered the position of food taster for the country of Ixia's Commander.

Yelena is a wonderful, strong, real leading character.


Book Cover: 3/5
Book Title: 5/5
Plot: 5/5
Characters: 5/5 (the reasons I keep coming back for more!)
Ending: 5/5

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Here are my reviews of the 3 season long cartoon series vs. the new movie by M. Night Shyamalan:

= Epic Win

= Epic FAIL

The cartoon series is a 3 season deal, and is one of the best written, funniest animated series I've ever watched. There is character development, unexpected surprises, and overall a vast sense of enjoyment had from watching.

The movie... was awful.

My first beef, they tried to 'Asian up' all the names. Aang (pronounced like dang without the 'd' in the cartoon) was changed to Ahng (so that it sounded more like they were saying Ahnk)... Sakka, (pronounced Sock-ah in the cartoon) was changed as well... along with every other name in the movie. It was *really* annoying.

Second, Sakka did not tell ONE joke... and really, neither did Aang (he only did one cute thing, once... the Aang I know and love is a constant wise-cracker). The animated version relies heavily on humor to pull these characters through what is really a very dark and oppressing world... the movie... was just dark and oppressing.

Third... dialogue. Possibly the worst dialogue ever. It made me believe that Mr. Shyamalan thinks children are dumb as bricks... they would recap, in lengthy detail, something you had JUST watched them do, then they would tell you what you were supposed to think about the situation (ie, "You should be scared... that was a scary situation you were just in") and then they would tell you what they were about to do... and this happened through the ENTIRE movie. There was one point towards the end of the movie where I found myself thinking, "Ah, well, this isn't so bad..." then I realized why I thought that... because it was the big battle scene and no one was speaking!!!

My advice? Take the $10 you were going to spend to see this stinker of a movie, and use it towards the purchase of the first season of the animated Avatar: The Last Airbender.

I was just thrilled that this movie only covered the first season of Airbender... so that the entire series couldn't be massacred for me.

His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

Did you like the movie Master and Commander?
Do you enjoy the Napoleonic War?
Do you like dragons?


If you answer yes to any of these, read this book. The dragons are endearing and the relationship that they form with their riders is wonderous and often heartbreaking in its sincerity.

This is the story of a British Naval Captain, Laurence who takes a French ship as a prize and finds there is a dragon egg on board. Dragon protocol is well known in this world, so they realize the egg will hatch soon and someone will need to harness the dragon or else England will lose a valuable war comodity.

A lower ranked shimpan draws the unlucky straw to harness the dragon, but the hatchling has none of him, and chooses Laurence instead. Because of this, Laurence is forced to give up his position as Captain and become an aviator. The book chronicles the start of his dragon riding career, and the beginning of an amazing friendship, and the birth of an unique and amazing dragon. (The dragon is named Temeraire, and you will fall in love with him!)

An Apocalyptic Trilogy by Susan Pfeffer

(clicking on the book images will take you to their Amazon sales page...
in case you want to buy em)

Let me begin by saying I'm a fan of the cheesy apocalypse movies. You meet some average guy who just happens to have all these crazy connections to the people who know what's actually going on, and through luck and circumstance, he ends up saving his entire family thanks to those connections.

Cheesy. Always Cheesy. But I love them... yet at the same time, other than the question of which characters are most expendible, you know the main guy will most likely make it through, and things will be fine in the end.

These books are NOT like that. Perhaps somewhat shockingly, these are young adult books... although the issues they deal with are very adult. Unlike the goofy movies about the end of the world, these books follow the lives of two different teenagers who *don't* have those magical connections that save their lives.

As I describe the plots of these books to friends and family, I keep getting the same reaction, "Wait... these books are meant for kids?"
This series deals heavily in the issues of Life, Death, Religion, Guilt, Sin, Pride, and on and on... and they do it well.

The books are meant to be read in the order of:
Life As We Knew It
The Dead And The Gone
This World We Live In

However, I read them in this order (at a friend's suggestion):
The Dead And The Gone
Life As We Knew It
This World We Live In

I think I kind of preferred them in the order I read them...

First off, the cataclysmic event that causes the Apocalypse is an asteroid crashing into the moon... it turns out that the object was more dense than scientists thought, and ends up pushing the moon closer to Earth. This sets off a chain reaction of tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, volcano erruptions, and on and on.

The main character in The Dead And The Gone, 17 year old Alex Morales, a Puerto Rican youth living in NYC with his family, really has no clue what's going on... he goes through the book and hears things by word of mouth... for me, his experience felt a little more realistic. He experiences true, heart-breaking loss and is forced to be a man much sooner than he expected. He is the one keeping his family alive, shouldering the responsibility, making what future he can.

In Life As We Knew It, the main character, Miranda (who is about Alex's age) is really a typical teenaged girl. She whines, fights with her mother, is greedy and thinks mostly of herself for quite a bit of the book. Miranda, unlike Alex, does not survive on her own skills, she lives because her Mother has an amazing survival instinct and does all of the right things the minute she *thinks* she might know what's happening. If Miranda had been in Alex's situation, she would have been dead... but that isn't to say Miranda is unlikable. She is an honest representation of a typical teenager, so for a reader such as myself, I could easily understand her motivations and the difficulty she had in grasping the seriousness of things... when "Mommy" was still there to take care of everything.

In the final book, the two characters and their families come together through random circumstance... and more apocalyptic revelries ensue... the author left it so that another book, if she wanted, could be written... but honestly, if she stays true to this premise, I'm ok with this being the last book, and I'm not sure I could bear to see what happens to these characters in another book.

These are not sugar coated apocalypse books. There is no magical ending where they find they know one of America's top climatologists, or the President of the United States or anything... these are people like you or I, regular people, and what happens to them when the world falls apart.

They are touching, heart breaking, heart warming, amazing books. I recommend them.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

This book is beautiful. It explores everything from savage death to beautiful life... so many things are ended and then started, started and then ended in this book, it rings so truly of real life that it will help anyone get through rough situations, no matter what they may be.

I want to believe in Alice Sebold's... in Susie Salmon's heaven.

This book's writing style drew me in immediatly, and I could not put it down from the moment I picked it up. Being the week before Christmas, there have been a lot of social obligations I have been forced to attend to, but had it not been for them, this book would never have left my hand.

I fell alseep with it open, I woke up to the words that I'd left behind to dream, and began devouring them once more.

It takes something sad and horrific and turns it into this beautiful understanding... discovering... rebirth.

I never would have suspected that, by reading the story of a violently murdered 14 year old girl, I would walk away feeling so uplifted.

Read. This. Book.

The Princess and the Frog ~ Movie

Disney has taken a little step back in time, pushed aside the flashy new digital animation that has done so well for them (I LOVE Up) and reverted back to their roots.

The Princess and the Frog is a hand animated piece... done the old fashion way, cell by cell... and it is BEAUTIFUL. The story is lovely. For a children's movie, it is great. There are points where I wish they would have spent a little more time, really delving into the character... but since this is, essentially, a movie for small children, I understand and am fine with the simplification.

One thing I truly enjoyed was that they didn't tip-toe too much around racism, or pretend that it didn't exist. The main character definetly had to face issues that were brought about by the color of her skin.

The 'Princess', Tiana, is lovable, relatable, someone you root for entirely and just very endearing.

The Shadow Man (the main villian) is creepy, dealing with 'the other side' which is quite spooky (and one of those things I really wish they could have gone deeper into) and a lovely design.

The Prince is both likable and arrogant.

The best friend is FANTASTIC.

Seriously, if you're a fan of traditional Disney work, GO SEE THIS MOVIE.

For those of us who grew up on it, it's heartwarming and nostalgic. For the little ones just getting to know Disney, this is a GREAT introduction.