Reviewing the Mail: Week of 2/21

As I say every week: I like to list everything I see for review, with at least some comments, since I know I won't get to read everything. On top of that, the books I like aren't necessarily the ones everyone else will -- though, if the world had better taste, this wouldn't be true -- so there's also an aspect of "somebody will like this thing, even if it isn't me."

This time around, it's the big monthly package from Yen Press, plus a few other things. I think I've reviewed earlier books in many of these series, so this may be a short 'un this week. We'll see...

Atsuki Ohkubo's B. Ichi, Vol. 2 leads off the Yen pack -- it's a January 2009 book. And I reviewed the first volume for ComicMix back in October, so I'll direct you there for more details of the plot and style. (Though I will note, looking at the cover, that this is yet another fictional manga world where young women struggle with the heartbreak of No-Nose Syndrome.)

Also from Yen, but not hitting stores until March, is Lily Hoshino's Mr. Flower Bride, which looks to be a standalone story. As you might guess from the title, this is a yaoi romance, with the usual unlikely set-up: Shinji is from one of those ridiculously traditional families so common in manga (the ones with traditions that no one else in the world has ever heard of, which they are absolutely wedded to), and the tradition in this one is that if the eldest brother's first child is a boy, his younger brothers must marry men rather then women. (Yes, that makes very little sense; the whole point of yaoi -- of huge swaths of romance manga, actually -- is to force the protagonist to do things he doesn't want to do. It's the cultural version of bondage, I guess.)

Also in March from Yen is Very! Very! Sweet, Vol. 3 by JiSang Shin and Geo. I reviewed the first volume of this series for ComicMix last year.

Another March Yen book is the seventh volume of Lee Eun's The Antique Gift Shop, which I also haven't read. My impression is that it's a fairly dark version of the "magical store" idea, and that each volume is about a different group of characters -- with the shop staff in supporting roles throughout. This one has a thief just getting out of prison, breaking into his older brother the policeman's house, calling his cop brother on the phone to taunt him, and thus making the cop run out into traffic and get killed. And then the plot really starts, with a weird girl who was living with the cop and refuses to be kicked out of his home. I don't entirely get it, but this is volume seven.

March also brings the sixth and last volume of Hissing, a series by Kang EunYoung. I haven't read or reviewed any of the previous books, but it appears to be a Korean romance comic (heterosexual division) about two people named Da-Eh and Sun-Nam. (I do my best not to make fun of Korean names, since I'm sure my name would sound silly to many people around the world, but the style of two hyphenated syllables does always ring very weirdly in my ear, almost like barbarians in a minor epic fantasy series. The problem is clearly mine.)

Another March title from Yen is An Ideal World by Chao Peng and Weidong Chen, a single-volume color comic from China that has a more European sensibility in its panel layouts and denser text. It's about a young man who chases a mysterious rabbit in his dreams night after night -- until, one day, his dull life is turned upside down.

And the last March Yen Press title I have this week is With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child, Vol. 4, by Keiko Tobe as always. I reviewed the first two volumes for ComicMix nearly a year ago, but I didn't see the fourth volume. It's the fictionalized story of one autistic boy in modern Japan, as told by his mother and very closely based on actual cases.

Switching to something very different, I also have Dandelion Fire, the second book in the middle-grade fantasy series "100 Cupboards" by N.D. Wilson. I didn't see the first book (which was 100 Cupboards), but the set-up seems easy enough to understand: young Henry York was sent to live with his aunt and uncle, and discovered a set of cupboards in his room -- a hundred of them, to be precise -- which were actually portals to other worlds. In this book, Henry learns that he's got powers he didn't expect, and that he needs to rescue his family from one of those many worlds. Dandelion Fire will be published tomorrow in hardcover by Random House.

Ian McDonald's Cyberabad Days collects all of the stories related to his 2004 novel River of Gods, including the Hugo-winning "The Djinn's Wife" and the new story "Vishnu at the Cat Circus." There are only seven stories here, but several of them are pretty long -- the new story is a long novella at that. And River of Gods is one of the major SF novels of this decade. So Cyberabad Days is a welcome collection -- it's coming from Pyr, and is officially published in trade paperback tomorrow.

Last for this week is the first part of the new "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" series from Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill: Century #1 "1910" will be available from Top Shelf in April. There will be three parts to this new story, each a eighty-page full-color squarebound book and each taking place in a different year of the twentieth century. Top Shelf is also publishing new editions of Moore's only prose novel, Voice of the Fire (as a trade paperback in April) and his controversial erotic graphic novel, Lost Girls (with artist Melinda Gebbie, as a single-volume hardcover at less than half the price of the previous edition.)