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jaepingsu 's review for:
Brave Story (Novel)
by Miyuki Miyabe
This is one of those books that I wish had been more heavily edited. It was good and I enjoyed it, but it was just too long to really be necessary. The beginning really sucked me in--it was a good mix of mystery, fantasy and drama. After Wataru is transported to the magical realm of Vision, things start to weaken significantly.
Overall, I felt that it was too many things right after another. As someone who grew up playing Final Fantasy and other Japanese role-playing video games, I'm completely used to the mini-story after mini-story fitting into a bigger picture. This, however, felt like there was a bit too many mini-quests and it really distracted from the major plot. I loved the story of Wataru's journey into maturity and acceptance, but the journey through Vision that got him there was a bit longer than I liked.
There were some awkward moments in the translation within the first 200 pages (before Wataru enters Vision and begins his journey) when the translator attempted to localize things. There will be times when it's obvious the translator is putting things in American terms, despite it being a Japanese novel, rather than making use of something like footnotes. That's just the picky part of me, of course, but I did find it jarring to have obvious American things mentioned in a novel that's set in Japan, and not in a way that made it seem it was some kind of import.
It was well-written (at least, the translation was well-done. I have no clue how true it is to the original text) and it really got me interested. It was a cute story and I enjoyed the themes and the magical world, but it definitely could have been shortened and still retained what made it good. Fans of epic role-playing games will probably get a kick out of it.
Overall, I felt that it was too many things right after another. As someone who grew up playing Final Fantasy and other Japanese role-playing video games, I'm completely used to the mini-story after mini-story fitting into a bigger picture. This, however, felt like there was a bit too many mini-quests and it really distracted from the major plot. I loved the story of Wataru's journey into maturity and acceptance, but the journey through Vision that got him there was a bit longer than I liked.
There were some awkward moments in the translation within the first 200 pages (before Wataru enters Vision and begins his journey) when the translator attempted to localize things. There will be times when it's obvious the translator is putting things in American terms, despite it being a Japanese novel, rather than making use of something like footnotes. That's just the picky part of me, of course, but I did find it jarring to have obvious American things mentioned in a novel that's set in Japan, and not in a way that made it seem it was some kind of import.
It was well-written (at least, the translation was well-done. I have no clue how true it is to the original text) and it really got me interested. It was a cute story and I enjoyed the themes and the magical world, but it definitely could have been shortened and still retained what made it good. Fans of epic role-playing games will probably get a kick out of it.