Manga: Oogu, the Inner Chambers Volume I by Fumi Noshinaga

Ooku: The Inner Chambers (Volume I) by Fumi Noshinaga, published in 2009.
Genre: manga, graphic novel
Source: personal copy

Description: In Edo period Japan, a strange new disease called the Red Pox has begun to prey on the country's men. Within eighty years of the first outbreak, the male population has fallen by seventy-five percent. Women have taken on all the roles traditionally granted to men, even that of the Shogun. The men, precious providers of life, are carefully protected. And the most beautiful of the men are sent to serve in the Shogun's Inner Chamber...

Comments:
My first manga... The 203 pages of graphic and sometimes dramatic drawings in this manga pulled me into the fictional world of female shoguns and an Inner Chamber populated mainly by handsome young men.

 The series is a twist on the historical facts, where the shoguns were male and the Inner Chamber populated by females. The book focuses on the new shogun, a young female determined to change the old traditions, reduce the number of men in the Inner Chamber, simplify their lives, and make an impact on society. 

I am very curious about the others in the series, to see where the story leads. There are about 11 or more of the books so far.

Book Beginnings: A Once Crowded Sky by Tom King

Friday 56 Rules: *Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader  *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you. *Post it. *Add your (url) post in Linky at Freda's Voice.

Also Book Beginnings by Rose City Reader.

Title: A Once Crowded Sky by Tom King
Published July 10, 2012; Touchstone
Genre: sci-fiction, comic book heroes

Book beginning: Chapter 1 is a comic featuring a hero
Chapter 2:  Ultimate, The Man With The Metal Face #566

Their lives are violence. Month after month after month, they fight a wonderful war, play a wonderful game, forever saving the next day from the next dastardly villain, the next meteor falling from the sky, the next giant monster emerging from his cave, his rock-fists swatting at the heroes rising into the air around him, and Pen slides the spatula under the half-cooked pancake and flips it over. The raw underside splatters wide and spreads across the pan. The circle starts to lose its shape as it falls into itself.

"I think I'm doing this wrong," Pen says. 

Page 56:  

A hand tugs him, pulls at Felix' shirt, tugs him, and he rolls backward on his back a few inches, pulled away from the fire, which has begun to spread. 

Book description:  "A Once Crowded Sky fuses the sensibility of bombastic, comic-book-style storytelling with modern literary fiction to bring to life a universe of super men stripped of their powers, newly mortal men forced to confront danger in a world without heroes.

The superheroes of Arcadia City fight a wonderful war and play a wonderful game, forever saving yet another day. However, after sacrificing both their powers and Ultimate, the greatest hero of them all, to defeat the latest apocalypse, these comic book characters are transformed from the marvelous into the mundane.

 After too many battles won and too many friends lost, The Soldier of Freedom was fine letting all that glory go. But when a new threat blasts through his city, Soldier, as ever, accepts his duty and reenlists in this next war. Without his once amazing abilities, he's forced to seek the help of the one man who walked away, the sole hero who refused to make the sacrifice--PenUltimate, the sidekick of Ultimate, who through his own rejection of the game has become the most powerful man in the world, the only one left who might still, once again, save the day." (publisher)

What do you think of this novel featuring comic book heroes without their powers?

Sunday Salon: March 20

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In spite of a tense week watching the unfolding nuclear reactor events in Japan, where I have relatives, I managed to get a few books read and two posted.

Reviewed the historical romance The Sandalwood Tree for a book tour and posted a travel memoir, The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War, for the Teaser Tuesday meme.


Books read:

Buttons and Bones (Needlecraft Mystery) by Monica Ferris, the newest cozy mystery in the series.

 Hagakure: The Code of the Samurai (The Manga Edition) by
Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Sean Michael Wilson, William Scott Wilson. A graphic portrayal of the classic book on Bushido, the 18th century warrior code of the Samurai.




American Born Chinese, a graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang. A Chinese-American boy learns to accept and live his true identity with the help of the Monkey King, a mythological character from the Chinese Classics.



The 4th Man, an award winning thriller with interesting twists and turns, by Norwegian writer K.O. Dahl.

I won the paperback edition from Nancy Oakes. Thanks, Nancy! A great read!


Current reads include two new books by Sandra Balzo, who writes a coffeeshop mystery series, Running on Empty (Main Street Mysteries) and A Cup of Jo. Sandra Balzo (Maggy Thorsen), both of which come out in April 2011.

Also, The Shepherd by Ethan Cross, a thriller for a book tour on April 8.


I also have on my list, Mourning Gloria (China Bayles Mystery) by Susan Wittig Albert , a hardcover with an April 5, 2011 publication date.

Guess I have a lot of reading on my plate. How about your week? What have you read/reviewed?