Archive for the Novel Category


Yuri Novel: Otherside Picnic, Volume 1 (English)

November 8th, 2019

Just about the time J-Novel Club announced their license of Otherside Picnic, I picked up the first volume of the manga to get a look at the story. Now that I have read the novel, by Iori Miyazawa, I find that I much prefer the novel to the manga.

Otherside Picnic, Volume 1, follows a woman who researches Internet myths and urban legends, Sorawo. The novel begins as she is drowning and is saved by a beautiful woman named Toriko. They are both on the “Otherside,” a place that is definitely not the normal world, but is accessible from it. They are there for their own reasons; Sorawo is drawn to the Otherside the same way she is drawn to ruins and abandoned places, Toriko is looking for her friend, Satsuki, who disappeared.

As Sorawo and Toriko travel together, encountering the flora, fauna and phenomena of the Otherside – and other humans,  who are there for their own reasons – they find themselves changed, both physically and mentally. And, although they can see that there are changes in their bodies, they aren’t necessarily sure exactly what the changes in their minds mean. As they discuss at one point, are the being of the Otheriside using human fear against them, or is their way of communicating or trying to engage with people? They don’t know and neither do we by the end of this volume.

As with Miyazawa’s other translated novel, Side-by-Side Dreamers, the author works hard to meld understandable, researched phenomena with wholly unique concepts, in a way that makes for an interesting read about experiences we have never considered before. This alone makes this book worth reading. Above and beyond this, the writing uses the cultural vertigo of a world whose rules are wholly alien and unknown to create a unique set of plot twists. By the end of Volume 1, we know enough to not always believe what we see or hear, because Sorawo cannot do so, but we are also reliant upon her for narration, which puts us wholly in her unreliable hands. This makes the reader feel as ungrounded as the protagonists, which is a genuinely terrific trick.

There is Yuri, although I’m finding it hard to describe. Sorawo always notes Toriko’s physical beauty right from the beginning, but early on she begins to feel an attachment that kind of jumps past “friend” to something else. She hardly knows Toriko, but wants to be with her. In her incoherent, misanthropic (and slightly jealous) way, Sorawo almost immediately bonds with Toriko and by the end of the book, it seems perfectly natural that her feelings will at some point be recognized as attraction. Additionally, we also learn that Toriko’s relationship with her “friend” was more intimate, which shifts something in Sorawo.

None of the characters are really likable, but neither are they unlikable. As with the Otheriside, we don’t really understand their rules…possibly because they don’t understand themselves.

Translator Sean McCann did a fine job with the vast vocabulary of Japanese Internet urban legends and the alien Otherside and the inside of a not-particularly-social person’s thoughts. Kudos to him and editor Krys Loh.

All in all, this is a slightly creepy, action-filled, semi-mythic story full of many ups and downs, until we don’t know where the ground is. All we can do it hang on and wait for the ride to be over. I liked it a lot.

Ratings:

Story – 9
Character – 8
Service – 2
Yuri – 5

Overall – 9

Otherside Picnic, Volume 1 is available on Amazon or on the J-Novel Club site in several formats. A sample section of the book is also available to read on their site.  Volume 2 will be available on Kindle  or on J-Novel Club in January 2020.

Many thanks to J-Novel Club for the review copy! This the fifth of their initial Yuri line and of these first 5 only one has not been something that I’d read a second time and consider two of them to be brilliant. That’s a hell of a record to start with. I am just so impressed with these choices, I’m really looking forward to more from J-Novel Club. They’ve made a convert of me. ^_^





Yuri Novel: Side-by-Side-Dreamers (English)

October 11th, 2019

As part of the the Yuri issue of SF Magazine last winter, I read a short Yuri story by author Miyazawa Iori.  It was very good. So, when a novel by Miyazawa was included in the initial rollout of J-Novel Club Yuri titles , I was super excited. It’s thrilling to me to read science fiction that is unique and thoughtful. That it has a frisson of Yuri is a nice to have…what I really want it to be a good story.

Side by Side Dreamers is a very good story.

It also was a case of atrocious timing. ^_^;

I’m a very bad sleeper myself and have been since I was young. I picked this book up as my normal insomnia was exacerbated by jet lag. So the opening in which we meet Saya, a young woman who has not slept in a very long time, and whose ability to function normally has been all but destroyed, I questioned whether this was the book I really needed in my life right that moment. ^_^;

Saya is trying once again to get some sleep when a schoolmate climbs into the bed she’s in…and instantly she falls asleep. Saya finds herself battling a creature in her dream with the other girl, who she immediately understands is her lover. Upon waking Saya is refreshed, but confused. As she encounters other dream warriors, Saya discovers a whole ecology of sleep monsters, the Suiju and the Sleepwalkers who combat them. Unfortunately for Saya, Hitsuji, her dream lover, and the other girls, the monsters are getting smarter…and are starting to enter the waking world! 

With an original, if poorly-timed-for-me premise, I was hooked pretty quickly into the story. The relationship between Hitsuji and Saya took second place to the main plot, which twisted in the most interesting ways. Their relationship was also pleasantly service-free. Even with girls sleeping as the plot driver, the lack of lingering creepy gaze was a relief.

The eventual climax was nothing I could have predicted, a quality I particularly like in my science fiction. It was a very good read.

Ratings:

Story – 8
Character – 8
Service – 2
Yuri – 4

Overall – 8

My expectations for the J-Novel Club Yuri line was not high – like most people who have read a lot of light novels, I tend to assume they are mostly franchise/genre extenders written for an audience with an 8th grade comprehension level. The current crop of “reincarnated as a log in a feudal monarchy” trend has not changed my opinion much.

I can say with all honestly, that after reading 4 out of 5 of the initial Yuri offerings from J-Novel Club, I am damn impressed. 3 out of 4 get top marks from me for good writing (and the one I didn’t love was blatantly not for me,) and 4 out of 4 for excellent translation.  And we’re not done yet, because we’ve go two more to go and at least one of them is superlative!  ^_^ Check back for a gushing review next week!

Thank so much to J-Novel Club for the review copy!





Yuri Novel: Last and First Idol (English)

September 30th, 2019

Last and First Idol, by Gengen Kusano, is the first of the J-Novel Club Yuri novels that I have read. Having read it, I feel that I stand in the presence of genius, very uncomfortably so. ^_^

This collection of three stories, “Last and First Idol,” “Evo Girls” and “Dark Seiyuu” are reminiscent of Murakami’s “Superflat” movement; combining pop culture and the shallowness of consumer culture with an eye to creating something new and extraordinary. In Murakami’s work, he’s using pop culture art as the base for his epic art. Kusano is using pop culture in the form of idols, seiyuu and mobile games as a base for hard science fiction, sprinkled liberally – and holistically – with philosophical discussions of consciousness, soul, time and life, with extremely detailed forays into science, with a strong emphasis on evolution.

The post-script essay by Satoshi Maejima gives us a few clues to the nature of this particular flattened construction; noting that the titular story began life as a Love Live! fanfic. Kusano himself likens his description of his opening story as a “widescreen yuri baroque proletariat hard sci-fi idol story,” as being suggestive of the kind of trope inversions we saw in Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

For myself it reminded me heavily of Piers Anthony’s early pre-Xanth science fiction Herald the Healer series and his early fantasy Tarot series, which, while both were obsessed with sex, dealt rather prominently with communication and evolution and society as well. (Disclaimer: The Tarot series is one of my foundational series and a great number of things remind me of it.)

“But in a deterministic universe only the present exists. There is no past or future. Determinism only allows for a time-like progression based on the laws of causality. All that existed is a privileged point in time we call the present. These points in time are related to each other, in that one occurs before or after another, but that’s all. In a universe where free will had shattered determinism the real present exists. The point at which free will activates is the present. By activating free will, we can create a future that had not yet existed. As opposed to the deterministic universe, in which all points in time exist simultaneously.”

Yuri Novel or philosophic rant by an unhinged pop culture addict? Or thought-provoking science fiction? Choose all that apply.

There’s no question that this book is bonkers, but bonkers in a brilliant and brilliantly disturbing way that nonetheless did not leave me feeling traumatized. This despite a great deal of violence, guts, cannibalism, and three completely different end-of-the-world scenarios, all uniquely horrific.

If you are still reading at this point, not put off by anything I have said, you are now ready to read story descriptions.^_^

“Last and First Idol,”explores the nature of pop idols in extremis, in which one young woman’s desire to be an idol, and another young woman’s desire to see her achieve that, drives her them reshape reality to achieve their ends. The end of the world and the destruction of humanity is nothing more than another idol activity.

“Evo Girls,” explores the exact opposite, using the media of mobile games, which have the ability to strip all life from the planet and how one addict puts is all back together, from scratch. You may have read other “reincarnated as an amoeba” stories, but you have never read one like this. Objectively, this one has the happiest Yuri ending.

In “Dark Seiyuu,” the universe turns out to be fundamentally not at all what physicists tell us it is. Genetically engineered seiyuu who fuel interplanetary travel, have the capacity to destroy or preserve life. Murderous Akane, driven mad by her dreams of becoming the greatest seiyuu, is the only one capable of saving herself and her kouhai, Sachi.

I have never before been so relieved that a book did not have illustrations.

The book is described as being “Yuri” and is being sold as being “Yuri” so, it behooves us to ask “Is it Yuri?”

Yes. Every story includes an intense emotional/romantic connection between two characters who identify as female. This last distinction will become clearer as you read the stories. I will not spoil, but I caution you to make no assumptions about my phraseology. It is neither gender nor sexuality, but humanity, about which I am prevaricating.

In more than one of the stories, “love” or “like” is probably not the right terminology, either. Obsession, mutual need, symbiosis, all come a little closer. I’ll tell you this, though – none of the stories have a particularly bad end. The beginnings and middles, though…you’re on your own. ^_^

 

Ratings:

Overall – 9

Genuinely brilliant, thoughtful and uncomfortable-making in a dozen ways, Last and First Idol is an excellent book, but not a light read. Thanks very much to J-Novel Club for the review copy!

Tomorrow, we’ll be talking to Sam Pinansky of J-Novel Club about this new line of Yuri science fiction novels and see what else in store for us!

 





Summer Reading: Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure

August 4th, 2019

It’s summer and the time is perfect for reading stuff you might not otherwise find yourself reading. As you know, if you are an Okazu Reader, I read just about anything. I’m fond of action and science fiction, and a few summers ago, I read a bunch of classics I had missed as a kid. And of course I read massive amounts of Yuri, which means I am frequently reading romance stories. But here’s my ugly secret  – I really don’t like romance stories! (Not so much of a secret, really, since I’ve been saying I want sports Yuri / action Yuri / science fiction Yuri for about 20 years… But here I am reading mass quantities of the one genre I like least. ^_^; )

As you probably also know, I am very active on Twitter. Despite the many flaws of the platform, both theoretical and practical, I find Twitter to be a breathtakingly fun way to learn from people in all kinds of circles I might never otherwise encounter. Which is how I ended up following romance writer Courtney Milan. She and a number of other non-white romance writers were writing about the (sadly predictable) gatekeeping and racism of white women in the romance publishing industry. I found myself following Milan and a bunch of other PoC romance writers, despite my disinterest in Romance as a reading material for myself, and because of my interest in publishing and in learning about a genre I am largely unfamiliar with.

When Milan posted that she had written a senior lesbian period romance and it was only $2.99 on Kindle I pounced at it so fast I surprised myself. Which is how I found myself reading Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure. It was delightful.

69 year-old Miss Violetta Beauchamps finds herself in a terrifying position of not only being a superfluous woman, but an unemployed, unemployable, poor, elderly, superfluous woman. She doesn’t like the way that looks. Having been summarily (and fraudulently) fired by the man she’s worked for for decades, Miss Beauchamps concocts a swindle. It’s not a great swindle, but as she’s attempting to swindle an even more elderly lady than herself – a fabulously wealthy woman, a woman who won’t miss a few dozen pounds, which is all she needs to survive – Miss Beauchamps heads off to swindle Mrs. Martin. Only Mrs. Martin, at 73, has a mind like a steel trap. She’s rich, she hates the way Terrible Men (including and especially her Terrible Nephew,) treat women.

What happens is a lovely, ridiculous, absurdly delightful story of class, and sexuality, body image issues and sexism…and sweet, sweet revenge. As Milan states:

Author’s Note: Sometimes I write villains who are subtle and nuanced. This is not one of those times. The Terrible Nephew is terrible, and terrible things happen to him. Sometime villains really are bad and wrong, and sometimes, we want them to suffer a lot of consequences.

The climax of the book was gratifying, to say the least. Exceedingly gratifying.

 

Ratings:

Overall – 9

You may, like me, not be interested per se in Romance genre novels. But for a fun summer read, one that was satisfying on several levels, and in which Terrible Men get what’s coming to them and the elderly spinster gets the elderly widow and they live happily ever fucking after, it was an absolute delight.





Winter Reading: A Whisper of Bones, a Jane Lawless Mystery

March 4th, 2018

Ellen Hart recently was named a Grandmaster of the Mystery Writer’s Association, a very great honor awarded to her by her peers. She’s written 33 novels, 25 of which are the Jane Lawless mysteries. Jane was one of the first out lesbian detective series that shepherded me through my 30s.  Hers was not a a story of  struggling with being closeted, as was Katherine A Forrest’s Kate Delafield, but she was, like Kate, an accomplished adult woman, with a life and friends (and she just happened to be good at solving mysteries.)

I have a soft spot for lesbian mysteries. It was the first genre of lesbian fiction that I could stand to read. Although a remarkable number of the detectives had shitty relationships and drank too much, in the time honored way of detectives everywhere, these were the first lesbians I had ever seen in popular fiction who existed in my world as lesbians. So I was willing to overlook a bunch of tired tropes. Including shitty relationships and alcoholism. ^_^

The last few Jane Lawless books have been a little uneven. I liked The Grave Soul, which I reviewed here in 2015. The beginning was very strong, but it thinned out a bit as the plot wore on. I didn’t review Fever in the Dark because it was a fine beach read, but nothing to hold on to.  But here I am again, this time reviewing her newest Jane Lawless book, A Whisper of Bones, because it did some very good things and some really not-good things.

To begin with, Minneapolis is now firmly lodged in my mind as a hotbed of creepy family mysteries and murder.  Maybe it’s time to take Jane on the road or it might begin to  affect tourism. ^_^

One of the not-good things is that it is now almost wholly implausible that Jane can run a restaurant and be absent so often and for so long. In this novel she literally walks out during a wine tasting at her restaurant at which the vitner is the guest of honor. I find it hard to believe that this could continue more than a short while before it began to take a toll on the well-being of the restaurant.

Another weak point was Jane’s implied incipient alcoholism in the last two books has just disappeared. And, of course she has a shitty relationship. As horrible as it sounds, I was looking forward to the impending death of her shitty girlfriend, but no luck so far.

The final weak point is one of the characters that fans love best, Jane’s friend Cordelia. In 1990, Cordelia, a kind of femle Oscar Wilde, was a delight. In 2018, she’s a tad wearing. Luckily for this book, she’s also given a lighter, more human touch, which made her less a piece of ornate scenery and more of an actual character.

The good things all revolve around the mystery itself. Hart’s got a great talent at creating creepy, moody set pieces that work out completely differently than  a reader could possibly imagine. And it’s that talent makes this book enjoyable. The right people end up happily, the right people don’t and there’s a bonus “you could not possibly have known” thing that feels a bit like the cherry on top. 

Ratings:

Overall – 8

As a fun bit of winter reading without making me (or allowing me) to work too hard at it, A Whisper of Bones is  a good choice to enjoy some light reading about a lesbian private detective surrounded by death, disease and lies.

Thanks very much to the publishing company, St. Martin’ Press, for the review copy!