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MINI-REVIEWS: The 14th Dalai Lama and Gandhi manga biographies

Posted by Anastasia on October 5, 2011 4 Responses »

Oct 052011

Click on the book cover to go to its Amazon page.

116. The 14th Dalai Lama: A Manga Biography by Tetsu Saiwai
Publication: Penguin (Non-Classics); Reprint edition (September 28, 2010), Paperback, 208pp / ISBN 0143118153
Genre: Children’s/MG Graphic Novel, Biography

Read: September 29, 2011
Source: Publisher (thank you!)

Review

It’s always difficult to compress a person’s life story into a book that’s less than 200 pages, but The 14th Dalai Lama: A Manga Biography made a decent effort. It highlights the important parts of the Dalai Lama’s life, from childhood to adulthood, and it gives a good overview of the situation with Tibet and China. The art was nice, if not overly detailed, and the writing was pretty compelling. Maybe some scenes were a little melodramatic, but they kept the story from getting boring.

I do have some issues with other aspects of the book, though. There’s no info on who translated the book, there are no page numbers, and the pages have been flipped. I’m guessing the flipping happened because it’s easier for people who aren’t familiar with manga to read, but why the exclusion of the page numbers? Why no translator info? It’s just weird.

Rating

Not the best manga ever, but it’s pretty good.

117. Gandhi: A Manga Biography by Kazuki Ebine
Publication: Penguin (Non-Classics) (September 27, 2011), Paperback, 192pp / ISBN 0143120247
Genre: Children’s/MG Graphic Novel, Biography

Read: September 29, 2011
Source: Publisher (thank you!)

Review

Since I enjoyed The 14th Dalai Lama I was hoping for something similar with this one, but unfortunately it’s not that good. There’s still the same issue with compressing 70 or so years into less than 200 pages, but I think The 14th Dalai Lama‘s author did a better job at doing it. Gandhi‘s author put emphasis on the world-changing parts of Gandhi’s life, sure, but he skipped over a lot of the personally important parts. The 14th Dalai Lama has bits with the Dalai Lama’s family, and his friends, etc., and it makes for a more compelling story. With Gandhi, almost all that personal stuff is either skipped over or visualized with maybe one page, and it made his story feel very cold. I don’t think the stilted dialogue helped, either.

Like The 14th Dalai Lama, there are no page numbers or info about the translator, and the pages are flipped. Even worse, however, are the multiple errors in the text, including a misspelling of “perhaps.” There also isn’t any punctuation except for exclamation and question marks, which makes reading it pretty terrible. The art is also less interesting than in The 14th Dalai Lama, which, considering how light on the details that one was, is saying something.

Rating

Good for the very basics of Gandhi’s life, but it’s got mediocre art and questionable copy-editing.

Mini-Reviews: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Magic Moon, Trinity Blood #1

Posted by Anastasia on August 20, 2010 No Responses »

Aug 202010

153. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
Publication: Pocket (June 1, 1991), Paperback, 306pp / ISBN 0671746723
Genre: Sci-fi, Fantasy, Humor
Rating:
Read: July 2010
Source: Bought

Review

I had to read this for my summer class, and I’m glad I was forced to because I don’t think I would have made it past the first few pages if I didn’t expect for it to get better. Those were some boring first few pages. Ignore those pages. It does get better. It gets so much better I feel like slapping myself for having a copy of Dirk Gently for over a year and not reading it!

Honestly, I think I like it a little better than even the Hitchhiker’s Guide books. Possibly I just like Dirk Gently better than any other Douglas Adams character, but I also really like the themes in Dirk Gently. Think for yourself, don’t depend on someone else (or something else) to make decisions for you, and don’t make science into a religion? Those’re some good themes, and they’re cushioned in a humor so delicious I just want to cuddle the book close and never let it go. It’s wonderful.

If you haven’t already read a Douglas Adams book then this one might the book to start with. If you have read a Douglas Adams book before then you won’t be disappointed with Dirk Gently. Either way– totally worth reading!

154. Magic Moon by Wolfgang and Heike Hohlbein
Publication: TokyoPop (October 3, 2006), Paperback, 344pp / ISBN 159816452X
Genre: Fantasy, Adventure, MG
Rating:
Read: July 2010
Source: Bought

Review

Oh my GOD I hated this book. Now that it’s been a few weeks since I read it I can look back and understand why, exactly, I disliked it so much, but at the time all I could think about was that I wasted three hours reading it. So here’s why I didn’t like Magic Moon:

1. Either the writing or the translation is very plodding. It doesn’t have a flow, it’s very choppy, and in some parts it feels like half the meaning of the words was missing. In other parts it’s like half the STORY is missing, and it got really annoying.
2. The characters are pretty stereotypical. Actually, the entire story is stereotypical. Young boy hero saves a fantasy world? That plot only makes me happy when it’s got something different going on in the details or a plot twist somewhere, or something Magic Moon doesn’t have anything like that. It’s just a typical wannabe-epic fantasy with all the standard epic fantasy characters. None of them have any depth– and if they did have depth I completely missed it– none of them are likable, and by the end I hated all of them.
3. The dialogue is horrible. Again, it might be the translation, but it felt like the characters were reading from a script from a particularly bad B-movie. Seriously cheesy stuff.

So basically, it’s a typical fantasy story with half-baked characters, bad writing, and an infuriating ending. I won’t talk about the ending because, y’know, spoilers, but if it had been the exact opposite of what it was I would have felt much less irritated than I did. GOD.

155. Trinity Blood: Rage Against the Moons #1 by Sunao Yoshida
Publication: TokyoPop (April 3, 2007), Paperback, 232pp / ISBN 159816953X
Genre: Horror, Action
Rating:
Read: July 2010
Source: Bought

Review

I read this immediately after finishing Magic Moon because I wanted something fluffy and almost totally different from what I just read. It could have been a disaster, because Trinity Blood is not the best written series– but it wasn’t! A disaster, I mean; it’s still not well written, but it is very enjoyable. It’s got vampires and a dystopian society with a weird version of the catholic church, lots of action scenes, a bit of sexuality, a killer android, a holographic nun, and a bit of steampunk thrown in for good measure. You know those silly TV shows that don’t have much depth to them but you enjoy watching them anyway, if you’re in the right mood and need something silly and relaxing to set your brain to? That’s what the Trinity Blood books are like. They won’t win any literature awards, but they’re a lot of fun to read!