About the Mangaka

Teresa Southwick is an american historical romance author who has written a slew of novels since 1994. She was nominated three times for a Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award,and won it in 2006. She was also nominated in 2003 for a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for series romance and has been a finalist for the Romance Writers of America RITA Award, the highest award given to romance authors. (snipped from Wikipedia)

Couldn’t find anything on Aso Ayumu who did the art sorry.

About the Manga

I’m torn on this, it was my first official review for Digital Manga Publishing so I wanted to give a rave review. Sadly I can’t do that as this has to be one of the sloppiest releases I’ve ever seen.

Before I get started several things to note. This release is a Kindle and eManga only releases, there is no print version, and none planned apparently. Also, sadly if you want the Kindle version you can only buy it in the US. If you live in Canada or the UK (or anywhere else for that matter), the only place you’ll be able to read it is on eManga. Which is Digital Manga’s eReading site.

Also, while this title is listed on DMP’s eManga site, it is not an official DMP release. The eManga website hosts titles from several publishers, including DMP’s own releases.

Okay, lets get into the meaty stuff.

Everything about this story is clichéd to bits, but that’s hardly surprising when you consider it’s released by Harlequin (a.k.a Mills & Boon in the UK), which have the dominance on clichéd romance stories.

Initial I was going to class this as an OEL, but apparently that wouldn’t be correct, since like Cirque du Freak it’s an english novel that was adapted specifically for the japanese, then brought back over hehe.

Art wise it’s a typical shojo, and if I’m honest I hate the cover, and if I saw a print version I’d be cringing over it.

As with all shoujo style stories the art is light, airy, and practically floats along on a breeze. The main girl is drawn rather plainly, but with a hint of beauty that comes out over the course of the volume.

The main lead, Kardahl, isn’t really to my liking. His design feels wrong, especially given what he’s supposed to be a Sheik. Rather he feels like every other japanese bishonen we see. There’s no air of exoticness him to really set him up as both a Sheik and the second in line to the throne. Which for me was a bit disappointing, variety is the spice of life after all

The adaptation is done reasonably well as far as I can see, bearing in mind I’ve never read the original novel.

The story isn’t quite what I was hoping, or expecting though. It feels rather short in the grand scheme of things, and events progress for to fast to be really remotely plausible.

I loved the initial relationship between Kardahl and Jessica, but the sudden change that Kardahl goes through, from keeping his distance, aloof, pained and tormented, to loving Jessica is to fast.

The story could have done with more pages dealing with Kardahl coming to terms with his feelings, as well as overcoming his haunted past. He literally just flips a switch, which is never a good hook.

However, despite all that, it was a good read, and as I’d just finished a long slew of reading nothing but shonen and seinen titles, this was a nice change of pace.

Sadly, as I said in my initial comments this was the most sloppily handled release I’ve seen a publisher do. In fact if it wasn’t for the fact it was on eManga’s website I’d be inclined to say it was some noob scanlator group trying to make money off scanlating.

The choice of fonts is atrocious, especially for a digital edition. The words are at times hard to see and I found I was having to zoom into the individual panels to make them out. On the original version they may have looked okay (though I’m doubtful), but in the transition to flash for the eManga site the words have become heavily fuzzy at times.

The next big thing for me was the resolution of the pages. Given the fact that this was a digital release I was expecting a higher resolution and quality than what you get in print versions. Sadly we seem to have less on both counts, which results in the art being faint and washed out at times. In a shojo series this is a critical mistake as the art is already faint and wispy.

Next we have the editing, and it’s this which really makes me call this sloppy work. We have text overrunning the bubbles, to small to easily read, and at other times squashed into place.

There’s also a load of empty bubble that leave me wondering what was cut out, what has been rewritten, and why. In total I counted over twenty empty speech bubbles. Some granted could have been left empty in the original japanese version, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a volume where that’s done more than a few times.

As I’ve never heard of the publisher, Softbank Creative Corp, I can only hope this isn’t a sign of how bad they’ll be doing in future releases.

Edit: Apparently Softbank Creative is a japanese publisher, who seem to be following Kodansha in releasing directly to the western market. They seem to be making the same mistakes as Kodansha as well, so I can only hope they’ll get better in time.

So, the big question is do I Junk Pile it? The answer is no, just barely. Despite all the issues I have with this title I did enjoy it for what it was. While I’ll never add it to my Essential Read list, if you want a change of pace it’s a good short read for chilling out with.

Where to Buy

• Only available on the Kindle in the US from Amazon US
• Everywhere else can rent it for 72hours from eManga for 200 points or Unlimited time rental for 400 points That works out at about $2 and $4 respectively)