I found this fair-condition softcover at a local Savers thrift shop. It's from a manga series I wasn't familiar with, so I gave it a try. The story-so-far and character-list pages helped catch me up: basically, gentle high school student Mikito encounters a mysterious kid named Zakuro, who offers to give him strength - but does so by effectively turning Mikito into an ogre. To keep from becoming a monster permanently, Mikito goes a-questing, in company with an ogre hunter named Kugai. Things get a bit confusing from here: there are lots of ogre hunters, but they don't seem to be hunting Mikito - indeed, the whole question of who's hunting whom and why seems to be the main part of the story. And then there's the truth behind Zakuro's "gift" to Mikito: as we learn in this volume, there are immense numbers of lives hanging in the balance as a result of Zakuro's little game...

There are plenty of interesting characters, including the ogre-hunters, and the mysterious sage/wizard who reveals some major truths to our ragtag band of heroes. And there are some impressive battle scenes, some scary and some truly gruesome - indications of how serious things have gotten.

It seems that the series only runs to 7 volumes; I may hunt up the later ones to find out what happens!

I left this book in the Little Free Library at around 3:15 or so; hope the finder enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in New Hampshire here.]