Written by Barry Lyga; Illustrated by Colleen Doran
This is one very smart book. There’s no other way to say it.
Lyga has written a wonderfully layered story that playfully bends our perceptions while always charming the reader. His co-conspiritor in this mind-warping endeavor is the very talented artist, Colleen Doran. Together, they have made a book that ought to satisfy any reader.
Colleen Doran
First off, there is the surface level of the story, high school teen-aged romance. An outsider boy (Ryoko) arrives and is immediately attracted to Marissa, the most popular girl in school. She’s recently broken up with the most popular boy in school, the handsome and top-jock Chaz. Marissa fights a sense of confinement brought on by everyone’s expectations for her: they expect her to be ordinary, they expect her to get back with Chaz, they expect her to agree that Ryoko does not fit into their world. Typical teen-romance dynamics.
But Lyga and Doran spin the reader’s expectations even more by playing with the conventions of two very different styles of graphic storytelling. Because the “different worlds” of Ryoko and Marissa are quite literally (that is, by the letter) the seemingly unmixable art styles of the “western” realistic representation of humans (Marissa’s world) and the stylized exaggerations of Asian manga comics (Ryoko’s world).
Ryoko has fallen through a dimensional rip and has landed in “our” world.
To explain why I qualified that “our” would spoil your delight in first reading this story. But I will say that even though Lyga and Doran “get meta” about this form of storytelling, it never steps outside the story. It may warp your brain in how you look at the story, but they never push you out of the story. And that is quite an achievement! They playfully make the progress of the story comment upon the mechanics of the storytelling, but they never forget to keep the story moving.
For all the mind-bending, Lyga gives us a story that deals with possessiveness in relationships, one that never actually speaks of it. Instead, he lets the story carry that message. He trusts his ability to make the point without beating the reader over the head and his trust is not misplaced. Doran’s expressive art brings depth as well as beauty to the clever storytelling.
It doesn’t matter whether you like the manga style (and conventions) or not — in this book you will enjoy them. Is there anyone so hard-hearted that they cannot enjoy a charming story of young romance? I hope not. Because such a person is about the only one who won’t find something to enjoy in this book. Lyga and Doran have created a tale that does far more than respect the reader’s intelligence — it assumes you are smart enough to follow what they are up to. It never talks down to the reader, but instead consistantly delights.
I don’t know if it is possible to praise this book too much. I’ll certainly recommend it to any reader. Get it. Read it. And enjoy.
