April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers

Novels/prose books:
Bierce, Ambrose: Fantastic Fables
(hmm. Lots to be said. Aesop's Fables, as written by a sophisticated late 19th century cynic; cynicism palls really, really fast. It's interesting, but at least from my perspective, not entertaining).


Romance:
Heyer, Georgette: The Talisman Ring
(I liked it! As I generally do with Heyer. She's very good, you know).

Sutherland, Peg: Queen of the Dixie Drive-In
(When telophase shipped this to me lo those many months ago, I meant to do an in-depth snarky review of it in lieu of payment. But I never got around to it, and then school happened. I think it was mostly okay? The prose didn't send me screaming and it wasn't hugely misogynistic or anything).


YA:
Jones, Diana Wynne:
The Game (way too short, but a good read. Loved the bit with the pork chop, and also how well the reveal worked with the prior characterizations; Jones always does that kind of thing well. There's a little part of me that keeps waiting for her to do some kind of truly pan-mythic story, but maybe that's not fair, especially at this point; she's a basically Western Civ gal, and I know that. And she does pretty good stuff with Greco-Roman/Western European/British Isles mythology; it's not as if she's stagnated with it).
The Spellcoats (reread),
Conrad's Fate (reread),
House of Many Ways (reread),
--totally meant to go on in more detail about all these rereads, but, as I said, school happened.


Light novels:
Ono Fuyumi:
The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow
(I wanted to love this, and Yoko, as much as bookelfe did, but I didn't. I felt better about that after I went back and reread her post on it, and her comments about why she identified so strongly with Yoko--identifying with a character is always YMMV, and I'm not that person. But I totally get the bit about it subverting fantasy tropes. It's fascinating for that, and the more I go back and look at it, the more I like the structure and plot. The prose of the translation is unimpressive, but the story is good).

The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Wind
(awww baby kirin. And, while reading this book, I found myself suddenly hugely in love with the entire universe--reading the second book made me love the first more, and made me desperately want more of the entire world, and all the characters. I begin to get used to Ono's mind, and I like it).


Graphic novels:
Foglio, Phil and Kaja: Girl Genius book four: Agatha Heterodyne and the Circus of Dreams (holds up well on a reread).

Warren, Adam: Empowered vol. 5 (awwwwww fuckity.
But I'm relieved. I expected to cry a hell of a lot more than I did. I am simply grateful that I didn't cry more than I did. I think this series will eventually rip my beating heart from my chest and set it on fire, because that's what Adam Warren does to your heart. And you then say, "thank you sir, may I have another? Because I adore your clever writing, even though you obviously want to hurt me.")


Manga:

Akino Matsuri:
Genju no Seiza vols. 6-7 (was that another PSOH ref with the kirin? Say it's so, Akino!).
Petshop of Horrors: Tokyo vol. 5

Mori Kaoru: Emma vols. 8-9 (oh shit the Meredith bedroom scene was so hot! There is no sex, although there is sexiness, but the intimacy--emotional and physical--is so pure and tangible I kept having to put the book down and go oof).

Ninomiya Tomoko: Nodame Cantabile vols. 15-16.

Otsuka Eiji, writer, Yamazaki Housui, artist: Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service vol. 9

Takaya Natsuki: Fruits Basket vol. 22

Umino Chica: Honey & Clover vol. 4.

Urasawa Naoki: Pluto vol. 5 (and here I'd just boasted to my LCS guy that I knew everything that was gonna happen because I didn't see Urasawa deviating from the basic structure of the plot as outlined in Tezuka's The Greatest Robot on Earth. So far, he hasn't, but this is fucking Urasawa, man. He's a master of suspense. He will surprise you, and he will make you hang. And he'll do it well. It's why he's awesome and we love him.

Urasawa Naoki: 20th Century Boys vol. 4

Watanabe Taeko;
Kaze Hikaru vol. 11

Novels/prose books:

Spink, Reginald, translator and collector: Alexander and the Golden Bird and Other Danish Folk Tales
(not much new to me here, since Danish folklore was part of the regional folklore collected by the Grimm Brothers. It was kind of interesting how England kept popping up as a figure in these though--Danish princes going off to marry English princesses and so forth).


Manga:

Gin Toriko: Song of the Hanging Sky vol. 1
(I picked this up based on Brigid Alverson's review at MangaBlog, and I'm happy to say that I agree with her review absolutely. It's a beautifully drawn, understated, moody book about cultural clash, conflict, and growing up. It's the most interesting title Go!Comi has licensed in awhile, and I recommend it).

Sugiura Shiho: Silver Diamond vol. 1
(this is how you do world-building for a fantasy world if you're a decent storyteller--slowly, in pieces, at moments naturally occurring in the flow of the story. In fantasy stories where characters from the fantasy world interact with characters from our world, there's often a temptation to have them do an infodump in the guise of explaining things to the characters from our world. Sugiura resists the temptation, and writes the protagonist from our world, Rakan as already knowing there's something abnormal about his own past, and hesitant to ask questions of his strange visitor because he's afraid the answers will destroy his sense of normalcy. The result of this is that we still don't know what's going at the end of this volume, but I at least am very interested in reading more to find out.

The sucker-punch is that Tokyopop will probably cancel this title and I'll never know. It's a pity, because it's the best new thing I've seen from them recently, not counting Petshop of Horrors: Tokyo, which is already a known quantity).


Umino Chico: Honey and Clover vol. 1
(Honey and Clover, like Nodame Cantabile, is a josei series I already know I like, and will follow in any format--manga, movie, animation, live-action television. It impresses me that this is the third time I've seen this story unfold, but this is my favorite rendition of it; the original material still feels fresh and exciting to me.

If anybody cares: no, I do not think there is anything skeevy or pedophiliac in Umino's depiction of Hagu as a very girlish woman. It's never felt that way to me at all. There is a significant difference between an adult who looks young and has childish qualities and a prepubescent child adopting sexually adult mannerisms. Other characters are shocked by Hagu's smallness and cuteness, but it's primarily her talent and artistic vision that they respond to, and what makes her interesting as a character is the way her adult persona is gradually revealed through suffering and struggles, through the articulation of her desires and goals and affections. She's not a jailbait character with an age arbitrary legal age slapped on top of her; she's a genuinely complex college-age adult).


Yazawa Ai: Nana vol. 12
(I wanted Nana and Hachi's reunion to be more emotional, but I suppose it makes sense that it's not; it's just a meeting between them, and after all, the separation has never really been about physical distance, but rather emotional distance. The emotional distance is still unbridged between them, and they do not yet understand how important they are to each other. It's so heartbreaking).

Fujisawa Yuki: Metro Survive vol. 2
(this was far less interesting than the first volume, but since the story concludes here, I suppose that's okay. It's nothing spectacular, just a solid take on the disaster survivor plot, and worth reading if you like those).

That was considerably more satisfying than I'd been led to expect. The Yamada/Mayama/Rika love triangle is indeed left totally unresolved--unless you agree with the show that Mayama's unrequited love for Rika is True and Right and Mature, and will obviously win out in the end, and that Yamada's unrequited love for Mayama is troublesome and shows that she's just an foolish young thing who won't grow up unless Mayama cuts her out of his life and lets his emotionally manipulative boss seduce her, in which case, the final episode resolves things just fine.

Ah, but Takemoto and Hagu...♥ They grew up so much. And the last two lines were just perfect.