The Tarot Cafe

The Tarot Café

By Sang-Sun Park

Pamela runs the Tarot Café, where she uses her Tarot deck to help guide those who seek her counsel. Her clients include vampires and fairies, and other fantastical creatures, such as a Wish-fulfilling Cat. Each comes to Pamela for help, with Pamela’s cards assisting to prompt more information, and to reveal hidden truths and wisdom.

There’s beautiful artwork here, with lots of gorgeously drawn characters, and detailed attention to costumes and backgrounds. The first volume has four episodes, each self-contained, though with Pamela’s continuing story linking them. The tarot cards are lovely, and are accompanied by little snippets of explanation so their relevance to the story is transparent.

A fun, dramatic and romantic manga series, with wonderful artwork.

Vampire Knight

Vampire Knight

By Matsuri Hino

Fabulous manga series – a gothic romance full of danger and suspense – with beautiful artwork and lots of angst!

Yuki attends the Cross Academy, where the humans of the Day Class are protected from the Vampires of the Night Class. It is one of Yuki’s tasks to foster understanding and tolerance between the two Classes. Complicating matters is her attraction to two of the gorgeous boys attending the Academy – Kaname, a pure blood Vampire; and Zero, her partner who hates Vampires. Zero’s story is also very complicated, and adds much emotion and tension to the story.

The artwork is lovely – and the story is full of angsty plot, great humour and blood-sucking attacks!

Tantalize

Tantalize

By Cynthia Leitich Smith

Quincie inherits a restaurant, which she reopens with a Vampire theme. She hires a new chef who may or may not be talented, and who may or may not be a Real Vampire. Her boyfriend is a hybrid werewolf, who is having trouble controlling his animalistic urges. And her school has recently suggested that she needn’t come in any more – offering homeschooling as a preferred option. Mixed into this is a murder mystery that prompts suspicions and accusations.

Despite the first person narrative, meant to draw the reader deeply into the inner characterization of Quincie, disappointingly there is no real character development or growth. In fact, overall, this novel suffers simply from a lack of depth. Never quite drawn into the drama or the romance or the mystery, it all becomes quite a shallow read, boosted every now and then by a bit of humour, but never reaching an engaging level.

City of Bones

City of Bones

Author: Cassandra Clare

This is the first in a planned trilogy – the series title The Mortal Instruments referring to three magical items that can grant power over life and death.

Clary Fray is a normal teenager in every way, until she realizes that she can see things that others around her cannot. As she begins her journey to reclaiming the heritage that has been denied to her, her view of the world expands to include the existence of demons, vampires, werewolves and Shadowhunters. Clary’s clueless-but-loveable friend, Simon, gets caught up in her adventures; and she meets the brooding-and-mysterious Jace, who is adored by his brother-in-all-but-name Alec; and Alec’s gorgeously-beautiful-but-tough-as-nails sister Isabelle.

It is the cast of characters that carry this first novel. Interestingly intriguing, they are worth the effort of trying to determine their place in the plot, their various motivations and simply enjoying their moments of uniqueness. And the gothic, urban, New York setting gives such a gritty realism to the fantasy elements of the story.

In the end though, the novel is let down by the unoriginality of the plot. It is so derivative of so much else – more than simply reminiscent - the worlds of Buffy, Dr Who, Harry Potter, and Star Wars, are all echoing around in there. I’m mindful that this is the first in a series, so there’s hope that Clare is using these worlds as a springboard to her own ideas in the next two books. The nod to Holly Black’s Modern Faerie Tales is nicely done, and aims for that ‘insider’ feeling for readers following two authors writing in the same urban fantasy genre.

I was too disappointed with the plot device revealed at the end of the story; it’s so cliché now, it would take a writer with extraordinary skill to make that type of plot-line fresh and believable. Unfortunately, Clare is not there yet, and it made the ending anti-climactic and wince-worthy.

Nonetheless, I will be looking forward to reading the next part, The City of Ashes, to see where Clare takes her story and these characters. I have hopes that this will be one of those series that improves enormously with each new installment, building to a trilogy seen, as a whole, as a Great Read.