Reviews
Reviews/issue summaries for Berserk and Jaeger are now up to date.
"Why don't you just kill yourself?" Gatts asks someone at one point early in the series. "If it's that bad, why don't you just end it? There's a knife just over there." It's a simple enough question and he's usually the one who asks them. The answer for him is that there is always a reason to drive yourself on, and in the world of Berserk this pretty much boils down to just one of two things: having a dream worth dying for, or a desire for vengeance worth living for.
It has been said that Berserk is not for the faint of heart (and it's true, a lot of people do die horribly) but like a lot of manga (even seinen manga, unfortunately) there are a few too many cute children in it for my liking, and I'd really like to see Schierke get cut up and eaten. Does that make me a bad person?
Dark Horse have released Berserk up to volume 22, which was published in March 2008. The Dark Horse Manga editions are clear and easy to read, even if the english translation varies (sometimes quite alarmingly) from those of Evil Genius and the various other scanlators on the web. Volume 23 of the Dark Horse version is due in May 2008.
My favorite translation
is the one from Evil Genius (I like that they have the profanity volume turned
up, it suits the story), and of course they are releasing current material as
it comes out, which I think is an heroic effort (the most recent chapter is
#295, from what should be volume 33). If - like me - you can't read Japanese,
read as many different english translations as you can because taken together
they give a better understanding of what is actually being said.
(NB. For "Gatts" you can also read "Gatsu" or "Guts"
depending on your preference. Dark Horse and Evil-Genius both call our handsome
and almost indestructible berserker hero "Guts").
Berserk is a medieval-style fantasy written and drawn by the brilliant Kentaro Miura and is published in the Japanese bi-monthy publication "Animal House". Buy the Dark Horse editions if you can. The best place to chase down the most recent scanlations of Berserk is from Evil-Genius (as bittorrent downloads), and (for the early volumes) in single page images from Spectrum Nexis. The untranslated raws are usually available online through one of the many Berserk forums, but it's always worth waiting a few more days for the Evil Genius english translation.
For individual chapter reviews from #278-#290, see here, and for #290- see here.
Jaeger is a vampire hitman with a great deal of charm and a weakness for handsome young men. This is a detective tale with a lot of quick-witted humour and a decidedly Aussie slant. A role-playing background certainly helps here (much of the magic and the realms are traditional AD&D), but it's not essential. Though there's a developing and intriguing story, this is primarily character driven. Jaeger has been around, he's streetwise and clued into the gay scene, which makes for some rather amusing subplots. But he's innocent enough about the circumstances that have made him what he is, and about the world of organised paranormal crime that he's landed in, for you to share his genuine surprise and his "holy shit!" reactions to some of the strange situations in which he finds himself.
Jaeger is a small-press production, written by Tanya Nicholls and published by Storm Publishing. The current issue available is #30.
Issue summaries for Jaeger from #21 can be found here. They're not really reviews as such, more a quick overview of what has happened (while I try not to give too much away) and what I believe are the highlights of each issue.
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Books
The reason for these summaries is simply to explain why I believe the book is worth reading - and generally I won't be adding a review here unless I think well of the work for one reason or another. I might stray into the deep and meaningful every now and again - but this may have more to do with the amount of sleep I've (not) had than with the impression the book has made upon me.
This
Game of Ghosts
Joe Simpson. The Mountaineers, an imprint of Random House, Seattle 1995.
Twilight of Love;
Travels with Turgenev
Robert Dessaix, Picador, Pan Macmillan, Brisbane, 2004
A Profane Wit:
The Life of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
James William Johnson, University of Rochester Press, NY, 2004
This page modified by C.A.L. 25th May 2008