Comic Review: The Wicked and The Divine (volumes one and two)

While I haven't been watching a lot of movies lately I am been up to my ears in comics and manga! Part of this is that I on occasion remember that the DC library actually stocks current comic series and I finally had a chance to check out a series I had quite a bit of good buzz about. Actually, I only requested the first volume, as soon as I tore through it I immediately jumped back online for the second volume and I'm hoping they get the third trade soon!

The Wicked and The Divine written by Kieron Gillen, illustrated by Jamie McKelvie

Book Review: Prudence

Well this is later than I wanted, both for this week and in general. I think I read this book back in April or so, my library got the book surprisingly fast, and I'm not sure why I forgot about it since I have plenty to say about it....

Prudence by Gail Carriger

Book Review: The Shadow Cabinet

There was actually a novella that came out in-between this and The Madness Underneath called The Boy in the Smoke and looking at this post I think I did actually read three of the four stories but I have no idea where. If you can also find those stories I do recommend reading them at some point since Stephen remains an important character in the series but I don't think it's vital that you have to read them before you track down The Shadow Cabinet.

The Shadow Cabinet by Maureen Johnson

Book Review: The Agency Book One: A Spy in the House

I might have messed up that title slightly since it's written a little oddly wherever I've seen it but oh well, at least this way it's easy enough to understand what book I'm referring to. I had seen a post on the The Book Smugglers blog recommending the latest volumes a few months ago and decided to go ahead and check out the first book so I could see if I wanted to catch up to this later volume.

The Agency 1: A Spy In The House by Y.S. Lee

Webcomic Review: Widdershins

Well it's that time of the month again, it's a bit terrifying how fast this first part of the year goes by. I'm afraid that I've been focusing one fantasy/sci-fi webcomics here more than I meant to but after thinking about it I realized that most of my favorite "realistic" comics are real-world journal comics, many of which are still fairly new or on and off hiatus fairly regularly. I'd ask for people to recommend me more but I'm not even sure what I would want out of a "realistic fiction" comic, do those include mysteries? Since I am completely down with more mysteries, although nearly every plot-centric comic will have a mystery or two in it just like this one here does.

Widdershins by Kate Ashwin

Radio Drama Review: Good Omens

Since I enjoyed the radio drama adaptation of Neverwhere a couple of years back I was rather interested to hear that the BBC would be adapting another of Neil Gaiman's works, this time one co-written with Terry Prachett (I have somehow managed to read only one other of both of their works which is almost remarkable by now). Since Good Omens was already on my to-read list I decided last August to go ahead and read it anyway and then, when I could still remember most of the book but not the finer details, listen to the Christmas-timed broadcast, although I ended up so behind that I didn't get to the broadcast until well after the new year....

Good Omens

Book Review: Untold

Hmm, for the first book in this series I was able to get an ARC and I was able to get an ARC for this one as well, abet I wasn't able to actually get a hold of it until well after the book was released (moving makes directing/picking up mail rather challenging it turns out). And of course my backlog of books to review doesn't make this review anymore timely but, since I haven't yet had to use tumblr savior for the third book in the series (which I had to do for this book about four months before it came out) I think that means I'm not too late to talk about it yet!

Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan

TV Series Review: Sherlock (season three)

Goodness it's been a long time since this show started, as the opening credits rolled by I was thinking that way back when this show first aired I had just started dabbling in video but by now I could do a fair recreation of the opening on my own if I put my mind to it (and put in quite a few hours of work that is). Back then barely anyone had heard of this show too and now it's everywhere. Before the first episode aired I was chatting with my mom and she said that they were taping it, my aunt's sister said that they would be watching it when I got home that evening if I wanted to join them, I started watching it while babysitting since my charge was already in bed, and when the parents came back, before the episode ended, they said that they were taping it too! Really, now everyone and their cat is watching the show (no seriously apparently my cat loves it when my mom watches Sherlock since it means he can sit in her lap for a full hour and a half without being moved).

Sherlock (season three)

TV Series Review: Ashes to Ashes (season two)

There's not much to say here that I didn't say in my review for the first season, if you haven't seen the first season of Ashes to Ashes don't start here, you'll be lost, and at this point if you haven't already seen Life on Mars you can still follow it but I still recommend watching LoM first.


Ashes to Ashes (season two)

Summary: It's now 1982 and Alex Drake is still stuck in London a police officer more than 20 years before she should be on the force. But she's not the only one with problems, it's become apparent to her and Gene Hunt that the force is practically rotting from the inside out with corruption and the more they try to just find the root of the problem the larger the problems become.

The Good: I'm not sure if the show found it's pace or if I did but I liked this more than the first season and about as much as I liked Life on Mars which is what I was hoping for. It helped that Alex isn't constantly chomping at the bit to get home, she's started settling in which is pointed out repeatedly to the viewer, and some of the elements in this season change even more what Alex and the viewers knew about this strange alternate (or past) world from LoM. That's interesting, the mere existence of A2A shows that not everything was revealed in LoM and I suspect that's why I've seen some places say that it's hard to understand the last season if you haven't seen both, bring it on is all I have to say!

The Bad: I can only hope the story has a good explanation for what was going on at the very end since otherwise that last scene could completely wreck the setting, although I think it's hinted at what's going on a bit with one of the new characters in this season. And I was a bit frustrated by the betrayal by another, long running character this season, since we've now seen them for multiple seasons it just felt completely out of character (even taking into account that there has been a several year time difference between LoM and A2A). That detail I think I'll just have to accept and move on but hopefully the show will be able to wrap up all it's other details satisfactorily.

The Production Values: It only took me a full season but I started recognizing some of the music, wahoo! Other than that, like before I don't have much to say, I barely know anything about the 80s so I can't comment on how accurate or no the settings, props, and clothing is, although in this show I'm always surprised at just how many songs they manage to find that are both apparently period accurate and reflect what is going on in the show.


So for this season I don't have much to say, it's the middle of a trilogy and often it's hard to find something to say about those stories no matter what medium they're in. But I'm giving this season a 3.5 out of 5 and can only hope that the ending doesn't let me down!

Book Review: Prisoners in the Palace

So, every fan of any media goes through burnout sometimes, some more frequently than others and some not often at all. I tend to go through a book burnout about once every two years (I think the last time this happened was when I read all of those really blah science fiction books two summers ago) and I'm in one of those stages now. I'm not seeing much I like at the library (not surprising considering how many years I've been going to each of them), going through my to-read list I'm baffled why some of those books are on there, and just not getting much pleasure out of reading. I grabbed this one from my school's library before exam week since I needed something to read when not studying and, well, at least it was better than the two or three books I tried before it from my list and ended up returning unfinished.

Prisoners in the Palace by Michaela MacColl

Summary: Liza Hasting has just suffered two tragedies: her parents have died in a tragic accident and she is apparently left with no fortune nor skills to earn money with and will soon be destitute. Because of this she agrees to become Princess Victoria’s lady’s maid and, since she stands a better chance at paying off her father’s debtors if her lady becomes queen and rewards her, she finds herself acting as Victoria’s maid, confident, and spy on the things going on around her.

The Good: As far as I can tell this was a fairly historically accurate novel (which sounds strange since MacColl says in the author notes that she rearranged parts of Victoria’s life so that the story flowed better) and I can’t remember the last time I read a book set in/around the Victoria era which didn’t involve supernatural happenings, it was a nice change. Liza’s situation ended up being handled more realistically than I would have expected. Actually, the novel made me realize how much I missed the upstairs/downstairs going on at Downton Abbey and it makes me want to read/watch other stories with that same dynamic.

The Bad: In the end, even though this wasn’t a terrible read I just didn’t get anything out of it and I’m not sure why. Liza was an alright main character, although she lacked some spark that would have made her a memorable lead, but I did feel like Victoria was a really inconsistent character and it was hard to tell if she had grown at all by the end. The story was okay and worked yet, even seeing in the author’s notes that the pacing of real life events had been reworked to make the story flow better, it still felt a just bit too laid back considering what the stakes were. Everything just felt a bit flat about this book and, if I hadn’t just come off of two weeks where I couldn’t find anything that I was enjoying reading at all I probably wouldn’t have finished it.

So giving this just 2.5 out of 5 stars for being an okay book but not one I expect to remember long into the future. And crossing my fingers that I get out of this burnout soon, although it's going on for longer than it normally does. 

Book Review: Timeless

And I finally, after several years of trying to achieve this, have finally read all of the Parasol Protectorate series, wahoo! So, same drill as before, talking about the summary of this book involves some good sized spoilers for the first few so only continue reading if you've read the first few or just plain don't care, although considering just how large this one is I'd recommend against that.



Timeless by Gail Carriger

Summary: Alexia and Conall’s daughter, Prudence, has been born and as predicted she has the ability to borrow a vampire or werewolf’s abilities which causes a whole slew of trouble given her surroundings. So its not without misgivings that Alexia accepts an invitation from the oldest vampire queen of them all in Alexandria, near the God-Breaker Plague of Egypt, and heads south hoping to resolve the mysteries of her family once and for all. 

The Good: In retrospect, Carriger started seeding many of the subplots that would appear in Heartless and Timeless rather early on and I’m impressed. I’m sure some might find the ending overly neat but considering how many of the characters in the series actively try to create neat endings for the people around them this shouldn’t be surprising. As for the actual book, I had always been worried how Alexia’s pregnancy, and subsequent offspring, would be handled but it all worked rather well here. Alexia still acts like herself, she and Conall truly love Prudence (which is in line with their characters), and the child is important to the story but not a plot device. Considering that I was expecting her to be left on the sidelines while the adult characters went on more adventures this is much, much better than I had hoped and for me that’s why the series ended so satisfactorily, it was smarter than I expected and that makes the story work for me better than almost any other ending could have. 

The Bad: In the end I do wish we had gotten a bit more information about both Alexia’s father and Floote. That storyline was also foreshadowed fairly early on but I think it needed not exactly more foreshadowing but more details revealed earlier on, especially considering how important it ended up being. Also, I feel like Madam Lefoux’s character ended up changing quite dramatically through the story, and well, it felt a little uneven by the end. Granted there is a timeskip between this book and Heartless, plus considering how Heartless ended a change in relationship makes sense (and she was changing in Blameless as well), but I almost feel like the Lefoux of Changeless is a completely different character from the one of Timeless. I’m not sure what I would have liked done differently but something does feel off and I feel like it could have been handled in a smoother fashion.


So I'm giving both this book and this overall series a 3.5 out of 5 which might be a bit low but there were just enough rough spots in the series to bother me yet despite those it's rather solid fun and I'm glad that I now own the books and would recommend them to a number of friends. Well, after making sure that my friends are okay with the implied sexytimes in the books but frankly considering how, uninterested and easily bored I am by sexytimes usually if I don't mind them then no one else I know will. With that in mind, if you like supernatural urban fantasy in Victorian London with some romance then give these a shot, hopefully you will have a better time finding the books than I did!    

Book Review: Blameless

So I finally, finally! got a hold of the rest of the Parasol Protectorate series, it just took me a while to realize both that the nice hardcover editions could be bought secondhand on Amazon for a reasonable price and that I had a birthday coming up where I hadn't really requested anything. In any case, expect reviews for the other two books in the series pretty soon as well, I ended up tearing through all three books in less than a month. Oh and as was the case with the first two books, a plot even from the end of the second book is critical to setting up the third book so this review is going to have more spoilers than usual even though I've done my best to keep them as vague as I can, just avoid the summary.


Blameless by Gail Carriger

Summary: Following the reveal at the end of the previous book that Alexia is pregnant she is out on her ear with Conall accusing her of unfaithfulness and living with her family who are being, well, her family. Confused as to how this actually happened Alexia decides to track down the only group of people who know anything about prenaturals, the Templars, all while dodging a large number of assassination attempts from the vampires.

The Good: This book manages to both have Alexia leave England to explore more of Europe and yet still include the most interesting characters (either as part of her entourage or by including a POV back in England). I think that’s always the hardest part to pull off when a story is set in a different location than the previous installment was and Blameless pulls it off better than a lot of stories do (although in retrospect we don’t actually see a lot of the rest of Europe, maybe that’s what the Parasol Protectorate Abroad series will be about). Also, while I’m sure someone out there will disagree with me, I thought the pregnancy plotline was handled fairly well, especially since the “oh the lady is magically pregnant and it’s scary!” plotline is sadly more common than you’d think. Alexia is her normal self, the pregnancy is unexpected but doesn’t threaten her health and, well, it’s not very scary. It’s treated fairly sensibly and much better than I expected it to.

The Bad: As just about every character points out, this is a rather flimsy reason to separate Conall and Alexia, although since it was necessary for the Templars to actually appear on page sooner or later (both because of what they know and because of their connection to Alexia’s father) and this was a good fit for that plotline. As an aside, it is slightly frustrating that it’s nigh impossible to have a good summary of these books without spoiling the events of the previous one, although that’s not really a problem with the books, especially considering that I enjoy books that are that plot reliant normally.

TV Series Review: Downton Abbey (season one)

Whew, I'm cutting it close this time. I always get behind in my viewing schedule when I travel and, even if this season was only 7 episodes long, this was actually a bit longer than your standard, 13 episode anime series. Actually, I watched this on Netflix which had the first and the last episodes listed as 66 minutes long but the other five only 48 minutes long, is that how long the show was in Great Britian or did PBS cut the episodes down again? I remember they made cuts to Sherlock, even the online streaming version (which I still think is silly) and I wouldn't put it past them to have done that here as well with such an odd set-up. In any case, thankfully I didn't feel like anything was missing here (like I felt might have been the case with Sherlock), well, except for the fact that Netflix doesn't have the second season streaming yet.

Downton Abbey 

Summary: The show begins in April 1912 with the news of the sinking of the Titantic and the news that the heir to Downton Abbey, a cousin since the estate is entailed and none of the three daughters can inherit, has perished. And thus life at Downton is going through a state of upheaval as the family decides what to do next and new people filter into all parts of their lives. 

The Good: The season may be a short one but wow does it pack a lot in. Spanning about two years in-universe, there are at least a dozen subplots and nearly every one of them is neatly and satisfying wrapped up (and those which aren't still come to a satisfying stop and I would have been annoyed if they had instead been rushed). The show makes great use of the time-period (I especially the liked the subplot involving the youngest daughter starting to become interested in suffrage and politics) and they characters all felt like they came from the time period (as opposed to the writer coming up with characters that inadvertently reflect more modern views and trying to squeeze them in anyway). All of the characters, likeable or not, were interesting and almost all of them grew and progressed as well, my hat is off to the writers for being able to do that with so many characters.

The Bad: This show should be watched without long gaps between episodes (you don't have to marathon it but don't wait weeks and weeks between episodes) since with nearly every named character having their own subplot that's well over a dozen plots to keep in mind. The show does a good job balancing them but it does dictate that the viewer should either planning on taking a few days to watch the whole show or taking some notes so they don't forget. I am a bit incredulous that some characters in the service stuck around as long as they did with their personalities, although that certainly happens in real life as well, and it does seem a bit strange that the family knows so many of the servants by name and does truly seem to care for all of them. There are some subplots that I would like to see continued in the next season, and I'm a bit worried they won't be given where this season ended, but I found this to be a rather strong show with few flaws to speak of overall.

The Audio: The show has one main theme that is played over the opening and ending credits that I quite liked, it managed to convey both the more relaxed life of countryside gentry and the more frantic life of their servants, and the music in the rest of the show worked well also. No other pieces really stood out to me but they worked well within their scenes.

The Visuals: This is one of the cases where I really prefer a live action show to a cartoon, the amount of detail in the setting and the costuming simply can't be replicated with anything but a huge budget in the animation world. The setting looks authentic and the costuming was gorgeous, normally I'm not a fan of Edwardian(ish) Era clothing but I'll have to give the period another look.


Fully intend to continue the show, although Netflix does not have it for streaming which does put a damper on my plans. However, it appears that Hulu will have it on Hulu+ soon and they offer one week free trials for it, I might be able to make that work out..... 

TV Series Review: Doctor Who 2011 Christmas Special, The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

I've debated in the past whether or not to review these Christmas specials since they're only an hour long but, partially since it is a self-contained story (and it looks like it will help connect season 6 to season 7) and partially since I don't have much else to talk about right now (unless you guys want me to talk about the 17th Precinct pilot that surfaced on the web which is pretty darn cool). As usual with these Doctor Who Christmas specials I was a little nervous about it, I haven't liked most of them but there's no more new DW until next fall so I wasn't in a position to be picky about it. 

Doctor Who 2011 Christmas Special: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

Summary: After being helped out by Madge Adwell in 1938 Great Britain, the Doctor returns in 1941 to help her throw a great Christmas for her two children while she is putting off telling them that there father has been killed. However one of the children opens up a Christmas present before Christmas day, a portal to another world, and the Doctor discovers that the world isn't as safe as he had thought it was.

The Good: While there were plenty of over dramatic and cheesy moments there were also quite a few genuinely touching moments, something that caught me off guard. I thought the story was well paced and worked well both as a standalone story and as a nice connecting point between the end of season six and the beginning of season seven and has a few other nods to earlier episodes in the series. I was also surprised by Madge Adwell, from the trailers she seemed like a rather stern and un-fun parent but instead she had a surprisingly amount of whimsy and tolerance for the strange, something that you really need to have to be a likable Doctor Who character.   

The Bad: That said, at times Madge seemed a little odd, like she wasn't a fully fleshed out character, her conversations with the miners were very strange. There was also a little plothole at the very end* but thankfully it's not one that should ruin the episode for most people. Honestly this was pretty well done but those some of the bits with Madge and all the parts with the miners came off as just awkward for me.

The Audio: Lots of lovely music in there, not sure if any of it was new but I recognized a few familiar theme and thought that everything worked well together.

The Visuals: There were some shots in the episode where the lighting didn't look quite right (it looked more like the lighting you would see for a promotional shot, like the one at the top of the review, rather than light you would actually find at the scene^) but other than that the episode looked great. There wasn't any strange CGI (by television standards anyway), the settings looked good, the costumes looked just fine, overall this was a really well put together special.


This is probably my favorite Doctor Who Christmas special now (mind you considering that I actually dislike most of the others this doesn't mean too much) and overall I thought it worked really well, wonder if it'll be on the season six DVD sets.



*spoilers! Where was the rest of the crew for the airplane? Dead? Didn't make it somehow? Just out of sight? I'm also assuming in this case that Madge has a "reading steiner" in effect so she can remember the earlier time line.
^come to think of it, Doctor Who has a very distinct way they light their promotional images and the lighting in the show looks different as well, but then again I've noticed that British tv shows and American tv shows do lighting differently so that's probably why.

Anime Review: Emma A Victorian Romance

Nozomi/The Right Stuf has been streaming a lot of this shows recently on youtube, most episodes are only up for two weeks but provided you keep up with them that's plenty of time, and this is one of their titles I've wanted to try out for years. I've read all of the main storyline of the manga and a few of the spin-off volumes (almost all of which sadly are super expensive since CMX went out of business two years ago) but I had held off from purchasing the anime since I wasn't so sure how much I would like this version.

Emma: A Victorian Romance

Summary: Set in Victorian England, Emma is a maid to the retired tutor Mrs. Stowner and lives a quiet yet content life serving her mistress. But one day Mrs. Stowner’s old student William comes to visit and it’s love at first site for the two of them. The problem is that William is the son of a wealthy merchant who hopes to marry his son into nobility to raise their class and no one, except William’s friend the eccentric, Indian prince Hakim, believes their love can ever succeed.

The Good: The original manga had a meticulously researched setting which makes this one of the most realistic depictions of Victorian England in anime and it's always nice to have a well thought out setting. The characters are clearly a product of their time and the ways they think and act are clearly influenced by the world they live in, except for Hakim who seems a bit too eccentric for his background and it's possible that's why he fades from a main character to a minor character as the season goes on. All of the main characters get enough screen time to flesh them out so that their motivations (and this is more of a slice of life story so the setting and character motivations drive everything) become very clear and understandable and that makes the whole story feel more realistic.

The Bad: Between the fact that I remembered more of the earlier parts of the series and I like the later parts of the series better (season two) it took a while for this show to get going for me. Since Emma is such a quiet (and many times passive) character I sometimes find her to be the most boring character in the story and William often wasn't any better for me, I'm never fond of characters who think of almost nothing but their crush when they're in love. I did come to like all the characters more but in the very early episodes I was worried that maybe I didn't like this story as much as I remembered and was going to be terribly disappointed as it went on.

The Audio: Emma elects to go for wordless opening and closing themes and instead have upbeat, almost folksy sounding, instrumental pieces instead which work quite nicely. The voice actor work is also quite nice, no dub exists for the series but the Japanese voices manage to sound completely natural regardless. It might help that I was less familiar with these voice actors (so I never had the odd moment when I recognized them from another role) but they all had very natural and down to Earth voices, especially Emma’s and if a series didn’t a dub that the setting really needed (part of the reason I haven’t watched this show before is because it is so odd to see a series set in England without an English vocal track) at least it had an excellent Japanese dub.

The Visuals: Kaouru Mori’s original manga contained a lot of fine detail, some of which I thought was lost in the anime but I seem to be in the minority here. I feel like the facial designs don’t translate as nicely (although they are very expressive) and at times the art seemed just a bit too bright. The backgrounds however are wonderfully detailed and provide the series with the same sense of authenticity that the manga had. The art did grow on me after a while but after reading the manga which was entirely pen and ink shaded it was a bit of a shock to see so many bright colors (although it's true that the Victorians did have brightly colored outfits so that would be historically accurate). 

It seems like I choose a very good time to follow this series since TRSI is offering a nice bundle pack of both limited edition sets of the series (which come loaded with extras) and I think I will try to grab those this holiday season. They've started streaming the second season as well so I've gotten back into the rhythm of the story and if I can't buy all the manga volumes then I might as well try to buy all of this version instead. 


 

Anime Review: The Mystic Archives of Dantalian

Only a couple more summer shows left to review, I think the number of summer shows I have reviewed speaks volumes about just how much free time I had this summer (or how I had time to read a 300+ page book each week to review). Like many other shows airing this summer, I checked out the manga before the show aired (the manga and the anime are both based on a series of light novels which may be finished) and funny enough the manga engrossed me more than the manga for Kamisama Dolls or Croisée in a Foreign Labyrinth did yet out of those three series the anime version was my least favorite.

The Mystic Archives of Dantalian (Bibliotheca Mystica de Dantalian or Dantalian no Shoka)

 Summary: Hugh Anthony Disward (Huey) has returned from the battles of World War I to discover that his grandfather has passed away and that he has inherited his large estate and title and so returns home to check it out. Once there he finds his grandfather’s ward, a young girl named Dalian who isn’t quite whom she sees and has an interesting connection to the Mysterious Archives of Dantalian that Huey has spent years searching for.

The Good: Most of the time the lead character(s) in a show are the protagonists because they are the ones who do things and move the story along which is a good thing, it's a very boring story if you are simply watching things happen to characters. Huey and Dalian are more observers than doers however yet they don't feel like dull characters, they have interesting chemistry together and the plot of each episode still moves along well. Huey is also not the dumber-than-the-audience sidekick that often comes up in mystery(-esque) stories and it's refreshing to see a character be completely unfazed by whatever happens and be able to deal with it easily. 

The Bad: A show, no matter if it’s episodic or plot heavy, needs something to tie together all the individual stories and show just why these stories were the ones focused on. It seemed like Dantalian would do this based on the opening, there are several other bibloprincesses and their key-keepers shown so I thought they would help tie it together but nope, they showed up too late and their presence didn’t do anything for the story. There is no overarching theme or connection between the episodes, except for the first and the last ones they could probably be viewed in any order, and like Blood-C I only watched it every week with the hope that it was an anime with a slow start and that I would enjoy it more by the end which sadly did not happen. 

The Audio: It’s probably not the first time it’s been done but this is the first time I’ve heard an anime theme song in Latin which was interesting, partially because I didn’t even recognize it was Latin until I saw the title (I’ve studied Latin for three years but the singer just sounded so different from Church Latin songs). The ending song might have been a nice one but the imagery freaked me out enough, more on that below, that I just skipped through it to the preview most times. Nothing about the actors voices stood out to me, they worked but they just worked, I didn’t feel like they gave the show any extra emotion or such.

The Visuals: There were two things about the art in Dantalian that interested me. First there was the fact that Danlian’s character design was actually changed quite a bit (the image at the top of the page shows the anime designs, here are Danlian and Huey's manga designs which I believe are closer to the light novel's designs)which I’ll admit was a change I liked. The other interesting thing was how there were a lot of photographs with a filter over them (a bit of grain/noise, maybe a blur as well) used as backgrounds. Gainax is known for doing strange things and I could see this trick working really well for a horror series but in the end it felt out of place here. The ending sequence was really freaky however (live action almost Dali-esque imagery) but it had no connection to the series in the end so I was rather confused by it as well.

The show was a swing and a miss for me sadly and it sounds like a lot of the structure it was lacking (that I thought it needed) is a holdover from the original novels which also don't have a very structured central plot line. I would read more of the manga if I could find it (even if I think manga! Dalian is much less cute) but for the moment I think I'll spend my time reading and watching other shows. For those who do want to check it out however it can be found streaming on crunchyroll (originally it was streaming on NicoNico but if you don't have a subscription there you can only see the first episode).