^ Eeeeeeee! :happy:
Reading:
Just finished
Blue Morning volume 1 by Shoko Hidaka. Feel all the feels! :'( This series is gonna kill me, I can just feel it. It follows Akihito Kuze, who inherited his father's Viscount-ship as a child, and Tomoyuki Katsuragi, who was appointed Akihito's butler (more like a steward/tutor, really) by the late Viscount. If I say much more I'll ruin it, but...it's so sad....
(It's also straight up shonen-ai/bl/yaoi/whatever you wanna call it, so here be warnings for you. ^^; )
Also just finished
Black Butler volume 18 (Yana Toboso) and
Devils and Realist volume 2 (Madoka Takadono and Utako Yukihiro). I got them in the mail a couple days apart, but I made a point to read them together for comparison's sake. For D&R, I'm finding the mythology even more interesting; some of the little touches are really nice. William is starting to grow as a character (though he still reminds me of Ciel and Alois's lovechild >_>), though it...kinda ticks me off that even with demons in front of him, showing what they can do, he still doesn't believe in them. Dantalion is quickly becoming my favorite character in the series (now that he's starting to shake off the trying too hard thing) and even Sytry's growing on me, though I keep forgetting he's not a girl. ._. However, I wish the series would take itself a little more seriously. I understand it's only two volumes in, but...no one seems in a particular hurry to get the next king of Hell elected, despite what some of the characters are saying. :/
For BB, I was happy to see the school arc wrapped up (Undertaker! My, how you've changed! :inlove
, though the next arc has a really slow start. I think Toboso's scared of getting into the heavy stuff (demon mythology, stuff about the Reapers, Undertaker's connection to the Phantomhives...who killed Ciel's parents...) because she has the tendency to hint at it and then pull away until it's not mentioned again for several chapters. Now, this could just be a clever way of keeping readers around, but it's also frustrating. XP Because I wanna know! Gah, stress! That said, I find that the arcs (particularly the transitions) flow really well and I find the characters more appealing than the ones in D&R. I just wish Toboso wasn't so hesitant to give a little more insight into her world.
Currently reading
Splintered by A. G. Howard. I admit, I bought it for two reasons: the sequel's cover is awesome and the story says it involves Alice in Wonderland. And it does. It does a lot. The story follows Alyssa Gardner, Alice Liddell's great-great-great-granddaughter. Since she was a child, Alyssa's been able to hear plants and bugs and has, to the best of her abilities, hidden this trait from everyone around her. Her mother, however, also has the same ability and hasn't been so lucky. The family seems cursed with insanity and, in an attempt to save her mother, Alyssa (and her friend/crush Jeb) ventures down the rabbit hole to set right her great x3 grandmother's wrongs against Wonderland. This has been a paraphrasing of the cover summary, now onto your regularly scheduled review. So far...I like it. I feel it's really rushed, though. I think it needed about another 100 or so pages before they got to Wonderland (could just be me, though, but I felt it was strange for Alyssa to go from denying everything her mother told her to suddenly believing her in the span of one day). That said, I do like the way Wonderland has been approached--it's not some whimsical place, it's dark and nothing is what it seems. I...do think the love triangle aspect was a little too obvious, though. On one hand, there's Jeb--he's a really nice guy, caring, artistic, brave--and, on the other, there's Morpheus, fulfilling the blue caterpillar's roll--how to describe him...um...Forbidden Game fans! Remember how Julian would get really sweet and seductive, but you always knew he could turn around and...I dunno, set the entire game on fire? Yeah, that's Morpheus. ._. Still, I've already ordered the second book, so I'm definitely thinking the book's going in a good direction. I just think it needs a touch of subtlety.
(...if only I could add all this to my word count. >_>)
