During this winter break from college, I read a couple of books I had and others I bought at bookstores when I was with my sister in Oregon.
This set is the manga for the Demon Slayer series. I begin watching its anime rendition, but once I reached the end of what they have made, I decided to finish the series through the original manga. These were books 6 through 11. It is about a world where demons exist and there is an order of swordmen trained from generation to generation to combat the demons. The main character, Tanjiro, joined the Demon Slayer Corp after his family was attacked and he came into contact with a Hashira, the highest-ranking swordman of the corp, who recommended him to his own former trainer.
When I was barely past a toddler, I read the Chronicles of Narnia. During a shift at the library on campus, I came across it and decided to read it again. I remembered little and it was sort of nostalgic.
It is known that C.S. Lewis used many concepts from the Bible for his story, and it can be seen throughout the series. I would say it is the last book that has the most parallels, specifically to the “end time” prophesy.
These were the three books I bought at bookstores. His Majesty’s Dragon is set right after the French Revolution, during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. Everything is basically the same during the time, just, that there are dragons. They have not overpowered machines of destruction like most dragon books. Instead, they are important and powerful, but they are vulnerable to cannons and guns designed for dragons. This story begins with a captain of a British Frigate on patrol. He captures a dragon egg from a French vessel, and before they can reach land, it hatches. In accordance with regulations, they try to find a person on the crew who the dragon will accept as a captain. It proceeds to ignore everyone and walks over to the captain and talks to him. This leads to his joining of the Crown’s Aerial Corp, intensive training, and eventually joining the front lines against Napolean (that is only the first chapter).
Midnight Thief is about a young woman who has been scraping a living in the city by stealing. She gets captured in a plot to overthrow the corrupt government led by an Assassin’s Guild and gets extremely tangled in the politics of the city. It focuses on Kira’s personal development and heavily pushes the idea of mixing cultures and races.
The Last Page is hard to explain. It is about a world mixed with magic, mathematics, gods, beings, and powers. It begins with two students at college, Caliph and Sena. They fall in love, but don’t quite realize it till the end. Sena is using him to open an ancient powerful book, so she never quite distinguishes if the love she feels for him is real or falsely imagined just to fulfill the requirements to open the book. Caliph first asked her on a date in order to use a spell to erase her memory in case she saw him steal a book, but she reacts quickly enough and it turns into a fight. They learn they are equals in many ways and are drawn to each other. Much of their relationship is sexual and adds to their doubt if what they feel is real. The plot is confusing at first, but there is more clarity as the book progresses.