Chain Mail: Addicted to You

I don't care about your lousy internal mistakes, give me the ENTIRE book series of 'Crest of the stars'! I not seen a lick out of you since the last one! I love this work and I demand to buy the rest!!!

For years, I have loved the anime. I was hoping someone would translate the books, and was happy to stumble across them in a bookstore. The books are better than the anime, and fill in some great details that the anime left out. It was also nice to see the artist's Ahb language that he created for the books. Though it can take a little getting used to the new words for things, I thought it added a nice, original element to the books. (The anime only used the true Ahb language for a couple words/phrases.) If you love the anime, you should read these books!

A group of bored teenage girls, who all have problems they wish to run away from, enter the anonymous world of online RPGs only to find themselves in a more terrifying situation than their previous ones. Although the ending was a little too...unpredictable for my taste, the story was engaging throughout and kept me squirming at the edge of my seat. The translations were pretty accurate as well and did a good job of maintaining the original author's voice. Overall, a thrilling, original, and startlingly realistic work.

Crest of the Stars: A Modest War picks up right where the first novel, Princess of the Empire, left off. Which is a good thing since Princess of the Empire ended off with a cliffhanger: Jinto and Lafiel were being held captive by Baron Febdash, who captured them when their desperate escape from the United Mankind fleet brought them to his orbital palace hoping to obtain fuel and supplies. Princess Lafiel has decided to take matters into her own hands and has started a rebellion among the Baron's vassals. Just to give a quick recap, Seikai is an immensely popular space-opera series by Japanese author Hiroyuki Morioka. Anime and manga adaptations have been available in English translation for some time, but this is the first time the original novels have been translated into English. It was well worth the wait. In the second novel we get more insight into the psyche and culture of the Seikai series' primary focus: the Abh. They are genetically engineered warriors who have made space their home, disdaining the planets inhabited by "landers." Over centuries they have built a massive empire based on both conquest and trade. We learn more about their history, including the terrible "original sin" which burdens the prideful Abh. The real delight of this novel is to see the blossoming relationship between Princess Lafiel and Jinto, the "accidental noble" lander who had his Abh title thrust upon him when he was a young boy. Brought together by chance, they now find themselves fighting for their lives and their freedom as both war and treachery threaten them at every turn. They become refugees, trying to hide and survive in enemy territory. Though their friendship grows and they are able to work together, their radically different backgrounds too often get in the way. They are very much an odd couple, and old prejudices threaten to tear them apart. But each comes to find unexpected sources of strength in the other, and they are able to persevere together for another day. The Crest of the Stars trilogy will conclude with the third novel "Return to a Strange World." But that will be just the beginning of a long epic, hopefully we will see the rest of the story that is still being released and enjoyed in Japan. I enjoyed the second novel as much as the first. The adventure and conflict is peppered with delightful moments of humor and irony. Fans of the anime or manga series should note that it is in the second novel where we really start to see a great deal of material which never made it into the adaptations. We finally get the story complete and unabridged.

Hiroshi Ishizaki's premise for this novel is an interesting one: Have characters who do not know each other writing a novel within a novel. Four lonely teens--Yukari, Sawako, Mai, and Mayumi--enter into the world of role playing through an anonymous chain e-mail, allowing them to create a fictional world in which each girl assumes the role of a character. The girls then write scenes from their respective character's point of view, building a story with the intention of creating their own private, if fictitious, world of mystery and intrigue. Eventually, however, the words of the created heroine begin to ring true in the girls' real lives: "When you talk about scary things, people start to think that you're the one who's scary" (p. 38). Only, in this case, those coming to consider the girls scary are not outsiders, but the girls themselves. CHAIN MAIL was originally published in Japan by Kodansha Ltd., Tokyo, in 2003. It was later translated into English by Richard Kim and adapted by Rachel Manija Brown. While the overall concept is good, the translation does lapse into stilted, unnatural language on occasion, and American teens may find it hard to bond with the characters. From the girls' names to the situations in which they find themselves--stressing over "cram school;" removing their shoes and storing them in "shoe lockers" while attending classes; Mayumi "treating herself to a bowl of barbecued eel over rice" (p. 107)--many American girls will be unable, initially, to relate to these characters, and may give up on the story too early. But footnotes are included for the more confusing aspects--"cram schools," for example, are described as, "Schools in Japan that prepare students for university entrance examinations by way of an accelerated curriculum" (10)--and if the reader is willing to embrace an unfamiliar culture, she, too, may find herself slipping breathlessly into the fictitious world created by Ishizaki and, within its pages, the world of mystery and intrigue created by her central characters. Reviewed by: Mechele R. Dillard