Manga / Yaoi / Romance / Drama

Publisher: BeBeautiful

I saw a preview of this title years ago and am very excited that BeBeautiful finally published this title. Okay, it's smut, but really good smut. Kodaka's men are always so bold and her fast action draws you in.

Did I mention the angst yet? There's tons. Lustful samurai, tears, plenty of blood, and angst. Very good!

Available for a Book Ring, if desired.

BookRing thread here

About the first edition - the publisher switched the back inside covers by mistake. Nothing else is out of place, and all the pages are in the correct order.

Arrived in the mail today.
Thank you!
I will journal again once I've read it.
:)

OK - that didn't take long!
The book started off with quite a, shall we say, 'bang'!
Rather shocking to start off with ;-)
Definitely smut, but I loved the artwork. How is it that cartoon men, especially girly, cartoon men can be so hot?! (gads, and what does that say about me?)
Anyways, I'm glad I read it - it was my first yaoi. I look forward to reading more, but hope to find some with a bit more 'romance'. My favorite part of the book was when Shirou was with Chihiro.
Thank you so much for sharing this book, laevina! It is so nice to be able to 'try' something new.
:)
I have pm'd the next in line for a mailing address.

Mailed to alkaline-kiwi today by airmail.

This arrived in the mail today before I started work. I wanted to start reading it straight away but figured that it probably wasn't a good at work reading choice (I aleady had a book packed in my bag to read anyway).

Started it as soon as I got home and couldn't put it down until I finished it.

The art is amazing and the story is quite interesting. I agree with Minerva101 on a few things, that there are some hot men in the illustrated world, I'll also be checking out some more yaoi manga/graphic novels (previously all the yaoi I'd encountered was pictures) and will probably be one with more romance.

Thanks laevina for starting this bookring and Minerva101 for mailing it to me. I'll be sending it on to okyrhoe next week.

Eeep I still haven't mailed this book!

Will be sending it to okyrhoe tomorrow. So sorry for the delay!

Arrived in my p.o. box today.

Thanks laevina for including me in the bookring, and alkaline-kiwi for posting it to me!

(**ouch** The cost of Kiwi-to-Europe postage must hurt!)

This is the first yaoi book that I read - and I enjoyed it!

OK, so the story is not faithful to the samurai code, but this is a fantasy, after all. Judging by the 'romantic' cover illustration I expected the manga to be somewhat 'fluffy' but it is truly an intense and 'hard' story.

sample pages: 1 2 3 4

video adaptation

This arrived in the mail from Greece yesterday. Looks intriguing! ;-) I wanted to sit down & read it then & there, but unfortunately I had someone coming over with a new bookshelf for me (for all my BookCrossing books! yay!) so I had to put it aside. Will read it this weekend though. Thanks for sharing, everyone!!

I did actually read this last weekend like I planned - July 28th-29th - but didn''t get around to journalling it till today. Sorry! But normally you get a month to read & journal a bookring book, right? We''ve all been fiercely efficient with this one ... ! :-D

I agree, guys, it''s smut!! LOL! Highly entertaining smut, though. ;-) This was my first yaoi also ... I have read some manga before (mostly ''Lone Wolf and Cub'', which I love), but not yaoi. It was great to get the chance to read some (hopefully it won''t be my last ;-) and to get this little insight into Japanese culture, which I find quite fascinating. The story was very entertaining, fun and also kind of emotional, although not entirely plausible - but hey, it''s a comic, right? The artwork is maybe not entirely my kind of tea ... there''s something about all manga artwork that just doesn''t appeal to me 100%. (My favorite comic is ElfQuest ...) But I can see that it''s very well done, quality artwork. What I don''t quite get about this is why everyone has to be so androgynous. I mean, like Fujimaro ... in a lot of scenes, you can''t tell whether he''s a boy or a girl, but he looks like a girl ... so the whole boy on boy thing kind of goes out the window a little, doesn''t it. I would have liked it better if the guys had been more obviously guys. I guess it''s a Japanese thing, though. :-)

An enjoyable fantasy! Thanks for sharing, laevina. I''ve really enjoyed this chance to try something totally new! :-) I''ve PMed KateKintail for her address, so hopefully the book can be on its way again soon.

RELEASE NOTES:

The book is now in the mail on its way to KateKintail in Virginia. Happy trails, little book! Thanks again, laevina, for sharing such a fun read. :-)

I got this in the mail today! What a nice way to start a holiday weekend :-)

It's kind of funny since I just mailed a book out to LeishaCamden a few hours ago, and got this in the mail today at the post office at the very same time! (Made me feel better about spending $50 on BookCrossing mailings, let me tell you!)

I'm halfway through another yaoi manga, so as soon as I'm done with that one, I'll immediately start on this. Lust, angst, and tough bishies? Oh, I definitely look forward to it! Thanks for the bookring, laevina!

I finished this a few days ago, and have been thinking about my comments.

The rape and non-con isn't really my thing- I wasn't exactly squicked, but I definitely didn't *enjoy* reading those parts. This isn't my first hard yaoi by far... but it's the first with so much non-con content so I wasn't prepared for that. That being said, I still loved the angst and drama, and the graphic, violent sex-slave portions were crucial to showing how dire their situations were.

What I really enjoyed were the relationships between the sets of brothers (especially the devotion and sacrifices), and between the more loving pairings. It was great to see the differences between the different kinds of sex... and to see these terribly damaged boys finding love and passion. The whole book was fascinating and emotional... what bold and brilliant characters! Even the bloodthirsty and/or evil ones were more complex than they seemed. But I definitely liked the scenes with Chihiro the best, hands down. The end disappointed me... but that's just because of the prior relationship here. I expect it was more complex than I'd assumed at first. Either that or it was a way to make us feel better about previous content?

The art was absolutely gorgeous- what beautiful, tough men! *thunk* All the grammar errors in translation really got on my nerves but that's to be expected in manga (and I don't suppose yaoi typically gets the best editors/translators in the business).

On the whole, I liked this a lot and am soooooooooo grateful I got to read it. I have Spacedog's address already, I believe. I'll PM to confirm before sending it. Thanks!

Sent out in the mail today first class.

DC#: 0307 0020 0000 8049 0672

got this last week and finished today. i'm also not really into non-con and violence so this was a bit much for me, but it was still entertaining and some of the art was quite good. if anyone here is looking to join a yaoi lending group, i've started one here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yaoi-library/

will send back as soon as i get the address.

The book is now back home! Thank you everyone for reading this title and sending it around!