Warning: My manga "reviews" often contain spoilers. I find it hard to adequately discuss a volume of manga without talking about it in more detail than some might like.
Volume 7 goes all over the place. Emma has been sold into servitude in the Americas - I think in the Caribbean. She goes along with it, not making any attempts to escape. She's lost the joy out of her life without William. Not to fear, William and Hakim learn the reason for her disappearance and travel to rescue her. Emma returns to England and goes to live with William's mother. His mother and Emma's former mistress endeavor to teach Emma to become a lady. She envisions a future with William and does not want to be an embarrassment.
Eleanor meanwhile is miserable over the loss of William. The Count, Eleanor's father, takes his anger out on his daughter. It is her fault that she lost such a catch. He sends her off to a "health spa" to recover from some invented illness. I enjoyed Eleanor's crazy sister, who likes dressing up in risque saris and hanging out with Hakim's dancing girls. She's feisty and fun and fierce defender of her sister.
There's a cute theme that plays out in the book. A poor little girl in the Americas finds Williams hat, which he dropped. She thinks it's a toy, but her family convinces her to send it back to England, to the store where it was bought. It gets returned to William, and he sends her a fancy doll as a thank you. It was a nice touch.
The best part of this book is the beginning of chapter 51. There are some beautiful drawings of Emma and William together. The dark background and wordless pictures perfectly portray the couple's longing and desire.
My one qualm with this volume is that it's too vast. Mori easily could have spent an entire volume on Emma, William, and Hakim's time in America. I would have like to see more of each plot point - Emma learning to be a lady, the reaction of William's family to this new development, Eleanor's predicament, Eleanor's crazy sister, and more. The volume covers too much in too short a time.
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I've never read Manga before, but I think this is a really cool feature. Kinda makes me want to get into manga :)
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your posts on these books, I had to reserve them at the library. Still waiting, it seems they are more popular than I thought.
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