Dark Magic

Christine Feehan
358 pages

Gregori has been waiting almost 1000 years to get a lifemate.  He has suffered through centuries of a bleak existence without emotions or color.  However, hope is in sight.  Gregori has found a lifemate.  Savannah is very young, only 23, and scared to be joined with somebody as old and powerful as Gregori.  Gregori has given Savannah five years of freedom, but he can wait no longer.  If he doesn't join with Savannah soon he will turn vampire.  However, he doesn't want to force her.  Savannah struggles but eventually comes to accept Gregori as her lifemate.  In the meantime, Savannah has attracted the attention of several vampires and a secret society of human vampire hunters, and it is up to Gregori to put an end to the threat.

I like the relationship dynamics at play here, and I'm a big fan of Gregori.  However, the plots of these novels are very predictable, and Feehan's use of language is getting VERY repetitive.  I think I'm going to have to take a break from the Dark series for awhile...

The Deception of the Emerald Ring

by Lauren Willig, 387 pages

Eloise decides to research the Pink Carnation by looking into one of the elusive spy's associates; but when she tries to find information on the young man by backtracking from documents regarding the beautiful socialite he was known to have been pursuing, she instead finds him linked with the woman's less celebrated younger sister.

The writing's still a little awkward sometimes, as Willig doesn't always remember to drop in narrative cues when transitioning between perspectives and time frames and the like, but it's still fun.  Also, despite the fact that she tweaks history a bit to make it fit her story, I feel like I'm learning a little something while also being entertained.  The modern-day framing story makes this series best read in order, since it covers only a few days each volume.  It amuses me that no matter how she describes Eloise's enigmatic source of historical documents, Colin, my brain insists that he looks like Colin Firth.  :P

Durarara!!: Volume 2

by Ryohgo Narita (story), Suzuhito Yasuda (character design), and Akiyo Satorigi (art), 175 pages

Celty dwells on her missing piece and Ryuugamine gets an unwelcome visit from some representatives of shady Yagiri Pharmaceuticals.

There aren't many passive characters in this series, though some do prefer to observe more than others.  But underneath, they're all acting on their own inclinations, following their intuition, and shaping their own stories.  It's just that they're all bound together by the interconnectedness of their crazy neighborhood, and so bound to influence one another.  Nothing's ever static in Ikebukuro, which is one reason Ryuugamine's so drawn to it in the first place (and why the reader doesn't mind hanging out on the corner to see what happens next).

Gente: Volume 3

by Natsume Ono, 166 pages

Loss--be it of a loved one or love, itself--finds comfort in this final collection of vignettes about the staff and customers of the Casetta dell'Orso.

One of the things I like about Ono is that she acknowledges that relationships are complicated, that we all grow older and change and lose and gain things and people along the way.  She doesn't neatly push people together or cruelly tear them apart here; rather, she lets them be and, eventually, accept themselves and adapt and find comfort, each in his or her  own way, with the ristorante providing them a second home and an extended family.

Gate 7: Volume 3

by CLAMP, 185 pages

Chikahito makes friends with the beautiful new transfer student as the others keep an eye out for their enemy, Iemitsu, and his deadly oni while facing off with other contracted individuals seeking Nobunaga's legendary oni.

This third volume of the series is more battles than anything else, but the interludes between confrontations offer just enough story and character information to keep the reader interested for now.  It helps, of course, that it's pretty, although the battles involve a lot of heavy inking, and that the character glimpses we do get are interesting.  Also, I do like the historical elements, as long as they don't get overused.  Still, I hope this doesn't turn into a lighter version of X-1999, with character development and story progression getting lost in the supernatural, magical warfare and mystical melodrama for pages / chapters / volumes at a time.

Batman: Year One

by Frank Miller (story), David Mazzucchelli (art), and Richmond Lewis (color), 135 pages

Batman's origins are revisited with gritty realism.

I read this because a.) it was on my list of must-read superhero comics and b.) I wanted to see how Mazzucchelli's artwork differed with his work in Asterios Polyp.  On point a.), yay!  I can see where this fits in nicely with Miller's The Dark Knight Returns as a turning point in the way superhero stories were told.  On point b.), holy cow, what a chameleon.  You think you know an artist or writer's style, but then you see what they can do when they're not bound by industry genre standards.  While Mazzucchelli's skilled art here is more realistic than what was common for the industry at the time, it bears little resemblance to the highly personalized style he reveals in Asterios and I doubt I ever would have realized they were drawn by the same hand had the name on the cover not told me.  That's one talented fellow.  Obviously, Miller's got kudos here, too, but my brain is focused on the visuals since I just read Asterios.

Courtney Crumrin: Volume 1: The Night Things

by Ted Naifeh, 125 pages

Young Courtney Crumrin is none too thrilled when her parents eagerly agree to become "caretakers" of her wealthy, eccentric great (?) uncle Aloysius and move the family to his creepy old house beside some spooky woods in a class-conscious town where things go bump in the night (and not everybody comes out of the woods who goes in).

Naifeh takes the old fairy tale tack of keeping the darker bits in order not to shield children from the more unpleasant aspects of reality and, so, doesn't pretend bad things don't happen or that protagonists don't have personality flaws like everybody else.  His heroine makes as many selfish, ill-advised decisions as the rest of us, but she has the pluck to sometimes succeed in getting herself out of fixes, too.  No little angel role model, is Courtney, but she's got what it takes (including luck) to face both the school cliques and the things lurking in the shadows.  If she gets a little in over her head now and then, well, that's when kids need to rely on grown-ups, right?  Or at least on the reliable ones who understand her.