Fortunately she has a brave little brother she can rely on, and her own farm with decent defences, and she is able to engage the services of a wandering vampire hunter, known only as D. He's a cool dude, but seems to be well on the way to being a vampire himself. If he had one letter less he would be a classic man with no name, getting into trouble, helping strangers, and only talking about his past in rare unguarded moments.
If I say that this is one of the worst novels I have ever read, you might think I'm exaggerating. But it is, honestly. It is what is known in Japan as a "light novel", which seems to mean a pulpy genre book with a handful of pictures (in this case by Yoshitaka Amano: they were the best thing about it). Some reviewers have called it a terrible translation, while those who have read it in Japanese say the translator, Kevin Leahy, has actually produced a very good translation of a badly written book.
I suspect the latter view is correct, and honestly would always prefer a translator to give us all the information from the original, but it makes for horribly overloaded sentences in English. Sentences like "a massive ashen citadel towering quietly atop a hillock loomed menacingly overhead" reminded me of primary school writing, where kids are encouraged to cram in adjectives and adverbs to score the top grades.
At first the awfulness was quite charming. Like an R.L. Fanthorpe book, it is exuberant, full of energy and a sense that anything goes. I also liked its unusual future history, and its sometimes admirable efforts to transfer typical manga tropes into prose form. It featured some entertainingly creepy monsters, and the fight scenes were full of drama. It was unpredictable: I rarely had any idea what was about to happen, other than that D would survive to subsequent volumes.
But the book is too long to get away with being so bad, and the longer it dragged on the more tiresome it became, and I began to admire those curious individuals who can abandon a book part-read. About halfway through, I resorted to using the name-swap option in my ebook app, to replace Doris's name with that of my wife. That way there was at least one character I cared about. What a relief to reach 85% and realise that the rest of the book was a preview.
That something so poor was published by Dark Horse seems incredible, given the track record of that publisher, but there are 28 further volumes available, so perhaps it gets better. And I think Dark Horse's manga readers probably appreciated the series being available in English at all, regardless of quality. It had some fun moments: how many novels have you read where the hero is killed, and then given magical CPR by his own severed hand? Stephen Theaker **
die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! didie! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! dixcxe!bie! die! diexcie! dixcbxce! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! dixce! die! die! die! bcx! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! diexbc! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! xcbdie! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! xbcdie! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! e! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! didie! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! e! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! ddie! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! ie! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! ddie! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! ie! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! ie! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die! die!
ReplyDelete