There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity

[gogmagog]

I picked up the first volume of Death Note today, since enkiae had raved about it so much.

...wow, I never dreamed a manga whose hero is a sociopathic killer with a God complex could be so much fun! <3 <3 <3

Anyway, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, the main character is Raito Light Yagami, a highly intelligent high school student. A shinigami (death god) named Ryuk has dropped his notebook, or Death Note, in the human world, and Light is the one to pick it up. It turns out that the Death Note has amazing power: one can write a person's name in it and that person will die in the manner specified (if none is specified, they merely die of a heart attack). Light, being...well, kinda sociopathic, and liking playing God...takes to the Death Note like a duck to water, killing criminals left and right in order to create a utopia where everyone's too scared shitless to do anything bad. He's aided by the fact that his father is a bigwig in Japan's version of the FBI, and hence he has inside info on many of said criminals.

Of course, this wave of bizarre deaths doesn't go unnoticed, and the mysterious L, Interpol's top operative, takes over the search for "Kira" (aka Light), who is somehow murdering all these criminals. Since L's name and face are unknown, Light can't simply kill him using the Death Note, and the two play a cat-and-mouse game. Light tries to use his father's connections to stay one step ahead of the police and mislead L, while L is steadily drawing closer to Light.

I'm totally looking forward to future volumes now. :D

I was also hoping to get a couple of other books, but Prairie Lights didn't have them in. I wanted to get the new Mercedes Lackey Elemental Masters book, since it's my favorite series of hers. Basically, the series retells classic fairy tales, using elemental magicians and a nicely logical magical framework, in the kind of settings tailor-made for me to like - so far she's done earthquake-era (1906, I'm thinking?) San Francisco, Victorian England, and England circa-WWI. Her new book, The Wizard of London, seems to be early Victorian London, features Lord Alderscroft (who played a small part in several of the previous books), and is a loose retelling of the Snow Queen story. (That, hopefully, won't be censored for US release [/Persona reference].)

I was also hoping to get Finding Serenity: Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon's Firefly. It's from the publishers of the very good collections Seven Seasons of Buffy and Five Seasons of Angel, both in which sf/fantasy writers write about said shows, writing about what they liked, what they didn't, what they felt the show was about, etc. This one branches out a little more - for example, apparently Jewel "Kaylee" Staite contributes an essay - but seems fundamentally similar. Also, Jane Espenson (a writer for all three Joss shows, usually for the funniest episodes) is apparently editing - the editor of the previous two books, Glenn Yeffeth, contributes an essay, though. I WANT TO READ THIS BOOK SO BAD but Prairie Lights doesn't have it. Bleah, it looks like I'll have to wait for the 'brary to get it in. ;_;

Edit: Dude, there's a Serenity pen-and-paper RPG based on the Firefly universe. If I played p&p RPGs, this would totally be like the holy grail! :D

In fact, it kinda makes me want to take up p&p roleplaying just for this game, but sadly I have no one to play with. ;_;

But note that entering "Serenity" into the Amazon search engine will also get you some undesired results. Like Serenity: New Bad Girl in Town, about a "bad girl" named Serenity who can only be saved by the "care and concern" of the Prayer Club, who must try to "break through Serenity's tough shell - and prove to her that true love does exist"? It sounds hilariously bad. XD

Comments

[shinkun.livejournal.com]

>>...wow, I never dreamed a manga whose hero is a sociopathic killer with a God complex could be so much fun! <3 <3 <3

Liar. It should be instinctive knowledge that mangas with sociopathic killers with God complexes are awesome.

[yoshitsune.livejournal.com]

I stand corrected. XD

[jokersama.livejournal.com]

The only tragedy about the manga is that it starts getting really dumb about about Chapter 35 or 40 or so. Until then, whoooeeee special. ♥

[yoshitsune.livejournal.com]

The thing I like the most about it is that Light totally looks like a psychotic version of Hikaru from HikaGo (since they have the same artist). XD