Princess Ai: A Whimsical Autobiographical Manga of a Rockstar

A Review By: Amelia

A diva torn from chaos. A savior doomed to love. Take an amazing journey with a mysterious young woman searching for identity and salvation in this world and beyond. She must piece together clues about who she is but the forces of chaos are closing in around her and her ceaseless love may not be enough to protect her.

So begins Princess Ai, a three volume series of mangas about a young, beautiful, alien girl name Ai who has been mysteriously transported to Tokyo. She has no memory of her past and the only clue to help her is a heart-shaped box. While trying to sort out her muddled memories and blend into modern Japan, Ai makes her living as a rock star (as her voice is hypnotically beautiful) and falls in love with a mortal man named Kent. As the story progresses Ai is pursued by gun-toting talent agents, demons seeking to take control of her homeland, and things only get stranger when she sprouts a pair of small pink wings!

Princess Ai was co-created by four people: Ai Yazawa, Misaho Kujiradou (who wrote most of and illustrated all three volumes), DJ Milky, and (believe it or not) Courtney Love. Yup, that Courtney Love–musician, grunge-girl extraordinaire, and widow of Kurt Cobain. Hard to believe right? What could Courtney Love possibly contribute? Well, more than you’d think. The main characters are actually based on Courtney and her late husband Kurt Cobain. And although Courtney love may not be from another world, Ai’s rockstar life is a vague, whimsical autobiography based off of her own life.

The characters followed most throughout the three volumes are Ai and her mortal love interest Kent. Ai is beautiful and talented, Kent is beautiful and talented. They seem to be meant for each other! At first, they seem a little flat as characters but they are surprisingly well-rounded people. Kent is a little too soft-spoken for his own good, making him appear apathetic, even bland, but he’s smart and more caring than most. Ai is self-centred, a little vain, and has the temper of a diva, but she’s mostly friendly and incredibly trusting. She believes people can change and always gives those around her a second chance.

There are also a few other characters tossed in there to help round out some of the traits Ai might be lacking. Hikaru, who is Kent’s gay roommate, is fiercely loyal. Jen, who befriends Ai, is sweet and completely unselfish. Nora, who is a prominent part of Ai’s past, is noble and righteous. These characters, and a small host of others, lend themselves nicely to the story without making you forget that it really is all about Ai. They add to Ai and you see more of her character through them then you could ever see if Ai had the whole story just to herself.

The art style in Princess Ai is very beautifully done, albeit lacking in originality: big eyes, blonde hair, yada yada yada. Of course, this doesn’t detract from the manga at all. The characters are attractive and detailed, their clothing (especially Ai’s) is superbly drawn, and overall, the art style very much suits the manga’s fantasy/romance based plot. Like other similar mangas, Princess Ai will differ from panel to panel. Panels with dramatic scenes are very detailed where as a comedic or action scene will have almost all details stripped away from it. By increasing or decreasing details, it creates a sense of emotion and urgency that might be lost if all the panels were always the same.

Princess Ai was a real treat to read. It has a great plot, well thought out and composed characters and a beautiful art style. Most surprising of all though, was how funny and thoughtful it was. It had themes of racism and self-hate; themes of not being able to fit in no matter how hard you try. And the characters grow and change and evolve through their struggles and it adds such realism, no matter how unrealistic the fantasy becomes.

My final thoughts on the manga Princess Ai are that it is a great manga–don’t be put off by Courtney Love’s name on the cover, or that it’s ‘technically’ a romance manga, there’s something in it for almost everyone be it plot, humour, fantasy, or the beautiful art style. All in all, Princess Ai is a fun manga. It’s light, it’s easy to get into to, and Ai’s fashion sense alone is enough to keep you enraptured until the end!

Secret Daughter: A Book That Should Be Kept Secret

A Review By: Amelia

I don’t usually read books that people go crazy over in huge numbers. I didn’t read The Hunger Games, I didn’t read The Help, but I did decide to read Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s highly praised book Secret Daughter. Based on the plot sum-up on the inside cover, I thought that it would be an interesting book, that perhaps it would show me something new and innovative in fiction. I mean, it’s so popular, so many people are gushing over this book, so it had to have something in it worth reading, right? I wish now that I had stuck to my principles and stayed far away from Secret Daughter as it turned out to be a tedious waste of my time.

The book follows the lives of two families: one a husband and wife that are both successful doctors living in the states and the other a poor Indian family trying to stake their claim in India by making rupees and having a son. Their bland and trite storylines intersect in the most predictable of ways: the Indian family has a baby girl, doesn’t want her, puts her up for adoption, and the American family adopts her. The adopted girl grows up in America wishing she were in India, and the Indian family, after finally having a son, come to discover that perhaps all that glitters is not gold. As if that wasn’t exactly what would happen from within the first chapter of the book.

As far as I can tell, this book was written with one intent in mind: to be emotionally deep. Hence why all the themes of the novel are laid out for the reader to know/guess within the first five chapters. You’ve got these constant and miserable ongoing themes of exclusion because the white American woman can’t have her own baby, her husband’s Indian family doesn’t like her, plus a million other things that she bitches about. Then you have the adopted daughter, feeling the exact same exclusion as her mother with her added self-pity that she’s apparently the only Indian girl in San Francisco! There’s no coming together of these two female characters and when they do finally start getting along right at the end, you can tell the mother’s only faking it and the daughter is still bitter about that. It makes you feel sorry that this is what the author figures is a healthy mother/daughter relationship.

Now, the thing I hated the most about this book: the characters. The main characters are as follows: Somer is an American doctor who can’t have her own children so she adopts from India, Asha is the baby that gets adopted, Kavita is Asha’s biological mother that had to give her away or let her husband kill another baby girl, and Jasu is Kavita’s husband who only cares about having a baby boy. I’d expand on these character descriptions but I literally can’t because the characters are so flat, one-dimensional, and stereotypical. In the American side of the story, Somer is self-pitying and self-centered to an extreme and Asha grows to resent her mother because she’s adopted and there’s so much angst in this fact. Heaven forbid she be happy with what she has, right? In India, Kavita wonders forever what became of the little girl she gave away, Jasu is a miserable sack of shit until his wife births to a boy, and then their son, who is an even bigger sack of shit than his father, is so flat and awful I can’t even remember his name!

The characters are just so poorly planned that no matter what they do, they come off selfish, stupid, arrogant, insert-any-other-nasty-adjective-here. Do the characters learn their lessons by the end and grow as people? Sure, like five pages from the end of the book; but they’re not happy about them because they had so little in their character to begin with that to suddenly deviate from what the previous three hundred pages said about them just makes the whole novel feel cheap and lazy.

From the other side of the storyline, there’s themes of regret from Kativa for doing what she did to her daughter and then, late in the novel (like I’m talking last five pages), these same feelings of regret come through her husband Jasu as he realizes the son he wanted so badly is shit but his abandoned daughter is wonderful. Blah. Blah. Blah.

The positive reviews for this book are a sham. Usually I don’t take such offense to positive reviews of books I don’t like because everyone has different tastes, but Secret Daughter has really raised my hackles. When I’m reading something I always try to focus on what I like about it and not what I don’t. Secret Daughter did not have one thing in it that I liked. It seems harsh, but it’s true. It has been praised as revolutionary by so many people but it’s done nothing new. Nothing.

My final thoughts are do not, kind reader, buy into the hype of this book. It’s boring, tedious, and flat. I suggest you keep away from this book at all costs because you will feel nothing after reading it except regret for having wasted your time. Secret Daughter’s actual secret, is how it has become so popular!

The Crow: A Comic That Both Dehumanizes and Amplifies Romance

A Review By: Amelia

The Crow, by James O’Barr, is a graphic novel about Eric and Shelly, a young couple just starting to make their life together, that are needlessly killed by a group of degenerate street thugs. Shelly is raped repeatedly and dies at the scene of their attack; Eric dies some thirty hours later in the ICU. Eric however, doesn’t stay dead. With the mystic, otherworldly powers of the Crow (believed by some ancient civilizations to be Death and the keeper of the underworld), Eric comes back to avenge his and his girlfriend’s death in the most brutal ways he can imagine. With no powers beyond his refusal to die, he barrels into the fights with nothing more than a couple of handguns, undying love for Shelly, and hate for those who wronged him.

This being said, The Crow is not a comic book written without compassion or human feeling. O’Barr wrote The Crow when he found the grief from his own girlfriend’s death to be to much. He translates his emotions perfectly into the story and makes it hard for the readers not to empathize with Eric’s brutal - but justified - killing spree.

           

The graphic novel is divided into five sections, and then, within the sections, further divided into chapters. Most chapters follow Eric’s bloody trail through the course of his revenge, but a few are devoted to his memories of better times spent with Shelly. These, unless you have no heart, will leave you teary-eyed more times than you’ll admit to your friends. Also, as an interesting way to divide up the gore and action, O’Barr has scattered numerous songs, poems and quotes all relating back to whatever happened in the last chapter or to the story as a whole. Joy Division and The Cure make appearances, as does the famous philosopher Voltaire. Overall, it’s an interesting and original way to add extra emotional content and pacing to the piece.

           

The art within The Crow is done in very simple black and white ink sketches. Eric’s memories are done in a soft, watercolour-esque style while everything that takes place in the present is harsh lines and an overall grim décor. To some, the minimalist art style adds to the overall macabre feel of the comic. To others, it leaves something to be desired. In a few interestingly placed panels, O’Barr inserts small black and white photos, the most noticeable being a picture of an open door in the last chapter of the comic. Do these pictures hold something significant to the grieving author? Do they bring back good memories, or bad? As the reader, we’ll never know exactly why these panels are actual photos and not just sketches, but it definitely adds a certain aura of mystery. Unfortunately, mysterious photos or not, if you haven’t found yourself relating to the story and dialogue, the art won’t be able to win you over. At its high points, the art is perfectly gruesome: so brutal and bleak that it really is beautiful. At its low points, the art is dated and the eighties hairstyles will leave you cringing.

Brandon Lee as The Crow

Comparing all this to the movie, well, no doubt more people of seen the movie than read the comic. Looking past media exposure though, there are a few obvious differences. In the movie, the addition of Sarah to the story arc makes Eric seem like less of a ghoul and more of a relatable character; and T-Bird’s gang is part of something bigger - not just a random group of monstrous thugs - which (towards the end of the film) makes Eric’s journey less of a selfish one. What’s left as the biggest question in the comic is whether Eric really did come back from the dead. In the movie, you watch him crawl out of his grave. This is left completely ambiguous in the comic. One group of readers may be left thinking that perhaps he never died but recovered from his wounds (hence why he takes his revenge a year after the attack) while another group may believe that his revenge against the gang was nothing more than delusions as he lay dying in the ICU. Either way, it’s left more up to the reader to interpret and react to, instead of just seeing it done one way and reacting to that.

The comic book, as a medium, is a much harder one to judge than say, a standard Hollywood blockbuster, and the fact that The Crow is radically different from a lot of comic books available makes my closing comments even harder. Eric isn’t your usual superhero in your usual comic book setting. That being said, there are a few things that make The Crow a graphic novel that should not be passed by; the most notable being that anyone who has ever felt the pain of losing a loved one will immediately empathize with the pain Eric goes through as he tries to find his revenge. Also, those looking for a unique comic experience should enjoy it for its content and stark art style.

My final say is that The Crow is a fantastic piece of comic literature, filled with raw emotion that’s comparable to actually having lost someone yourself. The art fills you with a beautiful sense of dread, the original story will have you engrossed beyond turning the last page, and the ever prominent themes of love and hate are as eternal and presented as beautifully as Eric’s love for Shelly.

The Last Living Slut: The Last Living Book of True Depravity

A Review By: Amelia
 
The Last Living Slut: Born in Iran Bred Backstage, by Roxana Shirazi, is the outrageous, yet surprisingly moving memoir of a girl who fled the Iranian Revolution and found her salvation in the deliriously sexy life of a groupie. It is the memoir of a girl who was raised traditionally in Tehran but is led far astray by the sound—and the sex appeal—of rock-n’-roll. Caught between her sexual appetites, passion for music, lust for musicians, and fear of being a bad seed (as she was brought up in a strict Islamic country), Shirazi bares her soul to offer a raw account of her life as an eager-to-please rock groupie.

The book begins with Shirazi’s life in Tehran: her family, friends, and the political turmoil of an Islamic country on the verge of civil war. Her younger years were spent without a father, and with a mother that vehemently protested the tyrannical government. Very early on in life, no more than five years old, Shirazi began to explore her sexuality, something that most woman never even contemplate, let alone carry out at five years of age. Her first act of self-exploration happened when she thought about the soldiers that would march through her neighbourhood and raid her house on a near daily basis: she dreamt of being degraded and admired by them: “The spectacle of the SAVAK, who terrified me, gave me a delicious dark thrill… it wasn’t supposed to.” (pg. 33) As a child, she would also flaunt herself to the neighbourhood boys and bask in their total admiration of her. Of course, this confidence about her body coupled with her total ignorance to the conduct of sex led her to some rather unsavoury situations including older men taking advantage of her pre-teen body. Disguising these incidents as karmic retribution for being a ‘bad seed’ she barely hints at the trauma caused by this abuse; but when it comes to accounts of rock stars’ sexual proclivities, she doesn’t hold back.

When she was forced to immigrate to England with her grandmother, escaping the dictatorship rule of Iran and the abusive nature of her step-father, she was made to acclimate in a foreign country where she was ostracized and bullied because of her ethnicity. Coming from a world where family and community were an integral part of everyday life and where Shirazi was used to being fawned upon by men and boys alike, her first years in England were more than tough on her. There was, however, a silver lining to it all. Although feeling completely alone in English society she found a home in her books and school work and, when one day at the age of thirteen she comes upon Axl Rose rocking out on MTV, she comes (pun definitely intended) into her own and proceeds to build a life that is filled with academics and ‘sexcapades’ with various bands all across London and the world.

The rest of the book can be seen as a strung-out raunch fest. One thing that may leave you puzzling is that unless you knows the bands and members she's referencing, it can get confusing to tell them apart as they cycle in and out of view. But her recollections of her sexual encounters are very clear and entertaining to read, her voice a humorous and sometimes self-deprecating force that presents these rock gods with all the veneration (or sometimes unease) she was feeling at the time. Eventually, all the fun and games get interrupted by some emotional hiccups that include, most prominently, falling in love: which inevitably comes with getting her heart broken. Along with acknowledging that rock n' roll is not a place to harvest emotions of love and fondness, she also addresses the strain of her broken heart on her life: “I had to remind myself that I was here in a groupie capacity, not to have a fucking romantic time.” (pg. 152) It’s clear that her emotions get the better of her as her life becomes a downward spiral, years worth of pent up angst, anger, depression and confusion overtaking her. Overall, Roxana Shirazi's time in the limelight as the most infamous groupie is recounted with intimate, humorous, outrageous detail that can, at times, be a riotous and fun read or a gut wrenching, heart breaking tale of a woman who is more than she appears to be.

Shirazi in the flesh

Overall, as a memoir of a life-less-ordinary, Shirazi offers something very unique. Aghast readers may lose track of Shirazi's rock star conquests, but her shocking sexual exploits are chronicled in such can't-look-away prose that it's impossible to close this X-rated book until the last bad boy has been put to bed. While the author's explicit descriptions of backstage orgies, threesomes, and random hook-ups might make even the most world-wise readers blush, memoirs like this are rarely written with such edgy prose: “I was hysterical because I needed my vibrator to work properly.” (pg. 272) Even as she pursues a Master's degree in English, Shirazi trysts with members, or hangers-on, of Guns N' Roses, Mötley Crüe, and assorted has-beens of the ‘80s hair-band scene still clinging to their former glory. However, when the author allows herself to fall in love, her memoir takes a turn that proves disastrous in myriad ways, rubbing much of the sexy veneer off of her shenanigans and showing her as she is: an original soul with a need to be wanted and a want to belong. Ultimately, no matter how readers judge her salacious life, no one can deny that she has a raw talent with words: “From top to toe, I am fully covered in black Islamic garb. But underneath I’m wearing no panties. Just in case.” (pg. 313)

My final thoughts on The Last Living Slut are that it is an amazing recount of a life not many people get to see, but because of this, it is not a memoir for everyone. Shirazi writes honestly, provocatively, and vividly but the squeamish will constantly be put off by her acts of depravity. For those who can stomach what she has to say, The Last Living Slut is a moving memoir of growing up in the political turbulence of Tehran; an unflinching portrayal of teenage cultural dislocation in London; a backstage romp that makes Pamela Des Barres's I'm with the Band read like a nun's diary; and a white-knuckled tale of jilted love and brutal revenge.

The Spy Who Never Grew Up: A Short Story for the Permanently Young at Heart

A Review By: Amelia

 

The Spy Who Never Grew Up by Sarah Rees is the fifth story in the short story complication Kiss Me Deadly: 13 Tales of Paranormal Love, edited by Trisha Telep. The Spy Who Never Grew Up is an odd mish-mash of old school espionage, a paranormal almost-romance, and – are you ready for this? – Peter Pan.

Six generations after the infamous Wendy, Ashley – Wendy’s great, great, great grandchild – finds herself whisked away to Neverland where she comes face to face with the thing that has haunted her family for generations: the boy who won’t grow up, Peter Pan himself. But Neverland has changed and Peter seems… older. Could it have something to do with his job working in Her Majesty’s Secret Service? Whatever happens, Ashley is in for an interesting experience as she learns to fly, explores the dying Neverland, and comes face to face with someone from Peter’s past who’s more than eager for revenge.

Now, considering this is a short story – less than thirty pages within the four hundred page book – there’s not a tonne to go into depth about. I can talk about the characters, but we all already know about Peter Pan: boyish charm, a naivety about almost everything, and an infinity for ‘thimbles’. The Lost Boys have all left Neverland, as have Tinkerbell and the pirates. The original character, Ashley, Wendy’s great, great, great granddaughter, is brash, jaded, and hateful of Peter’s friendly (for the most part) advances. She’s been told stories of Peter Pan’s insanity since she was a little girl because like it or not, Peter Pan always comes to collect what he believes is his: Wendy’s bloodline. She mentions more than enough times that her parents made her sleep with pepper spray under her pillow and how, if she ever has a daughter, she’ll make her sleep with a stun-gun under her pillow. Don’t get me wrong, the author completely ‘gets’ her characters. She makes them funny and clever and Peter’s even creepy when he wants to be, but for some, their over-the-top nature may leave you wishing they were kinder, gentler characters. Or, at the very least, had some kinder, gentler moments.

As far as locations go, Neverland is painted as a gruesome picture of a land tainted by unchanging time. The trees, grass, and flowers have all withered away, the Indians all died out (leaving Peter without Tiger Lily, his other favourite bloodline to tease and torment), and the water has become stagnant and unusable (a shame for the poor mermaids who became deformed monsters because of it). Of her time in Neverland, Ashley does nothing but bitch and threaten Peter to take her home or else some threat or another. She doesn’t even pretend to enjoy the adventures Peter takes her on until the last few pages of the book when they are sent, by the Queen of England herself, to destroy that certain someone from Peter’s past.

Now, why is Peter Pan a secret agent working for the Queen, you may ask? Well, the answer is… unanswered. It’s never really explained why Peter works for MI-6. Perhaps he took a job because he was bored with his life in the dying Neverland. Perhaps he took a job because he’s the perfect spy: young, athletic, and completely magical! Whatever the reason, the government of England has counted on him for a long time and it adds a pinch of originality and flare to this otherwise humdrum story of almost-romance.

My final thoughts on the short story, The Spy Who Never Grew Up, are that it’s an interesting concept to have Peter Pan working as a secret agent. More interesting than that is having Peter obsessing over Wendy’s bloodline; pining away long enough that he kidnaps granddaughter after granddaughter to try and fill his need for a mother. Ashley, as a character, might put you off as she is a teenage girl in an almost-romance story and, that in itself, is a whole new type of annoying character, but Neverland in its steady rate of decline is more than enough reason to see this story through to the end. If you’re looking for an interesting take on a classic story, The Spy Who Never Grew Up is a perfect choice. It’s short, it’s sweet, and it will give you more than enough happy thoughts to learn to fly (although pixie dust is not included).

Lady Snowblood: A Manga Gory Enough to Inspire Quentin Tarantino

A Review By: Amelia

Lady Snowblood issue one

Ever think to yourself you’d like to read an ultra-violent manga about a sexy geisha-esque woman hell-bent on revenge? One that goes to any length to achieve her vicious goals, usually while naked? Yes? Well then, Kazuo Koike’s Lady Snowblood is just the manga for you! Never heard of it you say? Honestly I hadn’t either until its vibrant yellow and black spin caught my eye on the shelf of a comic book store. The picture of the lovely, sword-welding woman on the front sealed the deal and for ten dollars, the first volume of Lady Snowblood was mine to enjoy!

In the early 1970s Lady Snowblood was published in Shueisha’s Weekly Playboy but wasn’t translated to English until 2005-2006 by Dark Horse Comics. Once translated, Lady Snowblood was split into four volumes, each volume containing five or so separate episodes that have self-contained arcs, but are also a continuation of the main plot.

Now, the plot of Lady Snowblood follows a young woman, Oyuki (aka Lady Snowblood), in a generation-spanning revenge plot. Oyuki was born and then meticulously trained for one purpose and one purpose alone: to kill the group of men who kidnapped and repeatedly gang-raped her mother after slaughtering her family. It’s not a gentle backstory and it gets no more gentle from there on in. Oyuki sheds blood with her charms, her sex appeal, and her cleverly concealed katana sword without batting her beautiful eyes. She makes her way through a crime-ridden, shit-sack, feudal Japan working as a mercenary for anyone who can afford it, all the while moving closer to her final objective.

Oyuki in all her glory

The whole of the story follows Oyuki on her gory quest of revenge and she’s really the only character you learn anything about. A few personalities from her past appear throughout the four volumes (her past really being her mother’s past but I digress). Oyuki is a very beautiful women but that is where her positive attributes end. Sure she’s intelligent, charming, and determined but she’s in it for all the wrong reasons. Oyuki could be seen as a femme fatale as she uses her sex appeal to achieve her goals but femme fatales are not usually bad to the bone. Oyuki, although she slays many people who deserve to be slain, has crossed a few lines in order to reach her endgame. Oyuki was born of hate, raised in hate, and sustained by hate; some of her exploits will leave a more gentle reader reeling.

One other character worth mentioning is Miyanara San who is a character who threatens to burst the fourth wall wide open! Miyanara is a writer who pens Oyuki’s stories of brutal conquest in an effort to draw out the killers of her family; and although played as an antagonistic character to begin with, he eventually comes into his own as he treats Oyuki like his daughter and even risks his life for her.

The on-going themes of Oyuki’s struggles are hate and revenge; and trust me when I say they’re on-going. You never stop hearing about how much Oyuki hates everything, about how her mother’s revenge must be fulfilled. Truthfully, by the last volume, you’ll be so sick and tired of hearing about her unwavering belief in her family’s retribution. Oyuki has a seriously unbreakable code. I’d almost say ‘righteous’ if not for the fact that what she does isn’t in the least bit honourable. She’s been indoctrinated to an extreme: nothing is too much to reach her goals and by the end of the series, you’ll be happy to have her murderous shenanigans over and done with.

The art style of Lady Snowblood fits nicely with its themes. The style is surprisingly beautiful when compared to the storyline. The locations (streets, forests, houses, etc, etc) and clothing have a level of detail usually not seen in manga. The faces and bodies of the characters, in comparison to everything else, are rather bland. They’ll have smooth, regular features if they’re a good character and rough, odd features if they’re not. Nakedness is seen often–Oyuki gets naked at least once a chapter–but, for the most part, it’s tasteful. Okay, maybe not tasteful, but not too overly offensive for people who don’t mind nakedness.

An action sequence

Action is drawn with long, sweeping lines and the blood splatter (and there’s a lot of it) is done in solid black. It’s actually a really nice effect against the snow and rain of certain fight scenes. Of course there’s only so many new ways to draw a katana sword slicing through a person’s neck so style does end up getting a little stale towards the end.

Lady Snowblood is very obvious in its intentions. It’s a ‘seinen manga’ (a seinen manga being a manga aimed at the target audience of 18-30 year-old men) and it is damn proud of that fact. There’s a storyline, but it’s not a complex one, there’s plenty of blood, violence, and more than enough sex to satisfy any red-blooded reader (it was published in a weekly Playboy after all). But women, like myself, who enjoy a good romp in violence every now and again can still enjoy this manga. Oyuki is a woman after all and, although not a woman to base your own character as a person upon (I can’t stress that enough!), she’s kickass, smart, confident, and doesn’t take anyone’s shit. 

My final thoughts on Lady Snowblood is that it’s an interesting manga. It’s ultra-violent, ultra-sexual, and gruesomely ridiculous. Its storyline is a little tired, a little trite; its characters a little hollow. Yet it’s still a compelling series. Don’t discount the work because it was published in Playboy, it offers something I’ve never seen in a manga before. It’s hard to explain but, put simply, Koike has brought to manga what Tarantino has brought to film. I guess it’s only fitting that Tarantino’s violent revenge epic Kill Bill was inspired so much by Lady Snowblood’s gory exploits thirty years before.

The Devil of Nanking: A Horrible Yet Fascinating Tale

A Review By: Amelia

History, folklore and ancient taboos are interwoven seamlessly with a modern-day mystery in Mo Hayder’s third book, The Devil of Nanking (republished as Tokyo in some countries). This story begins with Grey, a young Englishwoman, arriving penniless in Tokyo and nursing a major obsession concerning the horrifying events surrounding the 1937 Japanese invasion of China: specifically their six week systematic rape of Nanking. She has traveled to Japan to find an elderly Chinese professor said to have rare footage of the massacre that has a specific bit of information (though the reader is not privy - at first - to what it is) that has driven her obsession. In exchange for the film, Grey agrees to try to unearth information about a life-saving medicine used by an ailing Japanese gangster. Having no idea what dangers she’s gotten herself into, Grey submerges herself into Yakuza crime and probes at parts of the past that were never supposed to be remembered. Hayder alternates between professor Chongming's wrenching account of his experiences in 1930s Nanking and Grey's unwholesome adventures as a hostess in contemporary Tokyo.

Mo Hayder, for the uninitiated, is a diabolically gifted British crime novelist. She is the author of eight novels, all of which have debuted with wide spread acclaim, despite their often violent and disturbing content. The Devil of Nanking is her third novel and her first historical fiction. Mo left school at the age of fifteen and in the years leading up to her career as a writer, she took a job in Tokyo as a hostess in a high-end night club, which inspired parts of The Devil of Nanking. The segments about the Nanking massacre were inspired by the late Iris Chang’s book The Rape of Nanking, in which Chang writes about the hugely forgotten atrocities that occurred in Nanking. Mo Hayder uses these atrocities to add an extra dose of horror as the story unfolds: a story that is more about the horrors that people do to one another rather than anything supernatural.

Personally, the best parts of this book for me were the characters. The Devil of Nanking’s characters are an interesting mish-mash of personal demons and macabre pasts. Grey, the main character, is a fragile and - for the most part - disturbed young woman, bearing both physical and emotional scars that reach from her childhood living under her overprotective mother to her years in a mental hospital for an act of depravity as a teenager. For a large portion of the book she seems to be flawed past the point of ever considering herself ‘normal’ again. Then of course there is the supporting cast that goads her on and pushes everything into the extreme. There’s Jason, an American with a pre-occupation with death and a sexual fetish for ‘weirdos’ like Grey, a pair of Russian twins who are superstitious hostesses, and Shi Chongming an elderly Chinese man who holds an awful secret about the Nanking Massacre. The stories two main antagonists are Junzo Fuyuki, the ailing gangster with the mysterious medicine that Grey has been employed to uncover, and Ogawa, Junzo’s lurking, transvestite bodyguard / nurse with a tendency for gruesome violence. Combine these strange and unusual characters with an array of bizarre settings and the overall compellingly disturbing plot of the novel, and you have a wonderful showcase for the characters and their actions.

The themes that drive The Devil of Nanking, like its characters, are complicated and superbly thought out. Guilt and the evils of ignorance are the weightiest, as both Grey and Shi Chongming fight to conquer them. Near the end of the novel these themes then evolve into the separate entities of evil, ignorance, and acceptance as Shi Chongming and Grey are able to let go of their negative feelings about their pasts and accept their collective losses by simply admitting that they were not part of something evil but that they were just acting out of ignorance themselves. The Devil of Nanking is written in such away that all the themes are presented before you right from the beginning of the story but - in a way - it’s all down to you to bring them together: your grade twelve English teacher could have a hay-day telling you all the things she thinks this book means. 

Overall, it all comes down to how wonderfully this novel comes together; how all the little mysteries introduced throughout combine into a white-knuckle climax. The further you read (and trust me when I say it won’t take you long to devour this book) the more the two narratives become more and more engrossing as they gradually and ghoulishly intertwine. Hayder uses the four hundred pages in this novel miraculously as she introduces characters that will have you rooting for them one page and disgusted by them the next. Her writing style will leave you breathless as she elegantly overloads your senses with the places, the personalities, and the horrors of the past and present.

My final thoughts on The Devil of Nanking is that you should read it: now. Ideally, everyone should read everything that Mo Hayder has done and will do in the future, but start with this one. Of course since this is my favourite book of all time done by one of my favourite authors, I’m biased, but there are still many reasons why anyone who’s never read or even heard of Mo Hayder should pick up this book. Hayder writes with beautiful, stirring prose that can captivate and disturb all at the same time. She does a fantastic job of conjuring up the look and feel of Tokyo while weaving in a bit of mysticism. She’s done her research, and pre-World War 2 China come alive in Shi Chongming’s portions of the story. As a warning: if you normally can’t stomach gratuitous violence and graphic deaths, this book will make you squirm. But the story, the characters, and Mo Hayder’s brilliant way with words will be well worth it in the end: this is a story that resonates long after the last page has been turned.