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Questo libro mi ha lasciata molto perplessa. Appena iniziato mi aspettavo, vista la trama e il titolo, una commedia romantica, un M/M romance con un po' di comicità e scenette piccanti qua e là. E lo è... ma solo a metà. La prima parte è stata proprio come mi aspettavo che fosse. Troviamo Wyatt che è stato mollato dalla fidanzata, poco prima di farle la proposta di matrimonio (che tempismo invidiabile!
Note: This work is currently available for 50% off at Smashwords.
Yuki is a werewolf who's been kicked out of three schools in the past four years for getting into fights. She has a habit of acting without thinking first, and her amber eyes and brilliant white hair do an excellent job of attracting bullies' attention.
She's determined to do better at Sumiyoshi Girls Preparatory Academy, but blending in suddenly becomes the least of her concerns when she spots a kitsune, a werefox, in her class. What Yuki doesn't realize is that Ami, the werefox in question, has no idea what she is. Ami, for her part, just wants to keep her head down, graduate, and become a veterinarian. Being friends with an enthusiastic weirdo like Yuki is definitely not part of her plans.
I'd been reading Eugene Woodbury's Twelve Kingdoms fan translations and decided I should buy one of his original works as a sort of unofficial “thank you.” Fox & Wolf seemed like the one I'd be most likely to enjoy. That said, the excerpt made me think of anime and manga related fanfic, so I wasn't expecting much. Thankfully it turned out to be pretty decent, although I'd still hesitate to recommend it to someone who wasn't already an anime and manga geek. There were a few Japanese words and cultural details that weren't explained – readers either had to figure them out from the context, already know them, or google them. For example, the context mostly helped me figure out “o-furo,” although I ended up googling it for further details.
I should probably mention that I'm a white woman who has never been to Japan and whose knowledge of Japanese culture is mostly derived from anime and manga, which I realize provide a skewed view. I can't say much about the accuracy of how Japan (specifically Osaka) was depicted in Fox & Wolf. A lot of it, like Yuki needing special permission from her school for her part-time job as a dog walker, fit with what I knew from movies, TV, and books, although there were a few other things I wondered about.
Anyway, my favorite thing about this book turned out to be Yuki and Ami's budding friendship. I had expected Yuki to be more hotheaded than she was, considering her history, but she turned out to be surprisingly mature. I loved that she both recognized that Ami was better than her in some areas (like academics) and that she wasn't the slightest bit jealous of Ami because of that. All she wanted was to be friends with someone she knew had a hidden supernatural side just like her. I wasn't sure whether Fox & Wolf was aimed at a middle grade or high school audience but, if it was YA, it was unusual in that there was absolutely no romance – Yuki and Ami's story was purely a friendship story, with Ami realizing her true nature due to Yuki's influence.
Unfortunately, the story wasn't just about Yuki and Ami's friendship. I wish it had been. Their supernatural abilities and complicated family lives could have provided plenty of story fodder all on their own. Instead, Woodbury introduced a storyline in which Ami's mother's family was involved in a tobashi scheme and tried to get Ami's mother to help them using Ami's trust fund as an incentive. Yuki's father, who she hadn't seen since she was too young to remember, was the special prosecutor leading the investigation. This could have put Yuki and Ami at odds, except Ami was pretty cut off from her mother's family and her mother had no intention of doing anything illegal, especially not for the family who threw her out after she fell in love with Ami's father.
I'll just say right now that the whole thing with the tobashi scheme bored me. I had trouble following exactly what was going on, and I found myself wondering how a middle grade or YA audience was expected to do any better.
Confusing aspects aside, I hope Woodbury one day writes a sequel for this. I most enjoyed the parts where Ami and Yuki got to know each other and worked together at Osaka Dog Doctor. It'd be nice to see more of them and their families, and there's still so much I'd like to know. I mean, what about Ami's dad? How much does Yuki's stepmom know about Yuki and her mother? How long had Yuki's uncle and dad been in contact?
Additional Comments:
There were a handful of typos, some repetitive phrasing, and one or two incorrectly used words. For example, I'm pretty sure that it's supposed to be “knock the world off its axis” rather than “knock the world off its axels” (27) (and, even if it had been correct, wouldn't it have been “axle”?). I had noticed these kinds of errors in Woodbury's fan translations but had figured they were just “I'm only doing this for fun” sloppiness. It was disappointing to see it in his “for pay” fiction as well.
(Original review, including read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
A Fox's Love (the first American Kitsune book) started out quirky, teased us with a little fetish fuel, and then hit the WTF target during the final few chapters. Brandon Varnell is to be commended for successfully translating Shōnen manga to a very Western style narrative, all without losing any of the fun or sacrificing the storytelling itself. He could have taken it a lot further, but that flirtation is part of its charm, and that constant temptation looms large over the entire story.
Initially, I found it an awkward read, but only because I was expecting something wholly Western. Instead, Varnell plays with the physical conventions of manga storytelling, constantly breaking down the fourth wall, speaking to the reader, and peppering the tale with abrupt scene fades and embarrassed bridges. What starts as annoying soon becomes cute, and eventually reveals itself to be quite clever.
As for what it's about? Well, you have a shy, lonely young man who rescues a wounded fox, despite his landlord's prohibition on pets. All is good, until she begins demonstrating remarkable healing powers, and eventually transforms into her human form (complete with twin tails). It's a furry lover's fantasy come true, but no matter how much she tries to please and delight poor Kevin, he's too shy and proper to allow her to get beyond first base. Having an oversexed Kitsune in his life isn't easy, but it does have its advantages - especially when the school bully turns out to be something more than human himself.
It's a lighthearted tale that never takes itself too seriously, and which demonstrates an sincere love for all things furry and manga. The story itself likely won't come across as very original to anybody who reads a lot of manga themselves, but that's precisely the point. A Fox's Love takes the Shōnen, the Kitsune, and the Ecchi out of their panels and puts them into paragraphs, and delivers an entirely satisfying tale with some genuine surprises towards the end.