Customer Reviews

Twelve Kingdoms, The - Hardcover Edition Volume 4: Skies of Dawn

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Out of the four novels that were turned into anime, this one was my favorite. I have been looking forward to this book since 2006, which is when I stumbled upon "Sea of Shadow" and found that these were finally being translated.
The story does not disappoint.

What has really miffed me about this book are all of the editing errors. That is why I gave this book 3 stars opposed to 5. As Yamichan2, the reviewer before me, has pointed out, there are a ton of grammatical errors. There are conjugation errors, punctuation errors, double words, wrong words, ambiguous statements that a comma would certainly fix, and even spelling errors. Any of these would have been tagged in a spelling/grammar checker. It is absurd.

To add injury to insult, characters are also reference improperly. A kirin's gender is misidentified in one passage. Kei-kei is called Keiki in one passage(these are two different characters). Yoko's name is spelled "YOKE" in another passage. And Yamichan2 mentions a few more.

Certainly read this for the story. It is great.

Try not to get too frustrated with the errors.

This book, in fact the entire series, is very interesting. The storyline is interesting, well-though out and engaging and I own a copy of every book and the anime series. I love them.

I was however very disappointed with this volume. Not with the story, as the story is great. I was disappointed with Kara Stombach, the editor. Before I finished the first 100 pages I found at least 3 errors in the text that should have been caught. All grammar errors. When referring to a group of people in a crowd you do not refer to "their face" but to "their faces", among others. Over all I counted at least 6 or seven grammatical errors, some of which could be understood and forgiven, since this is a translated novel. However, it is not okay to mix up the characters and refer to Yoko when the character in the scene is Shoukei. Nor is okay to miss to have Suzu refer to Yoko as "Yoko" when at that point she thinks her name is "Youshi". Near the end of the text Yoko is explaining how her name is read in Japan and the text is supposed to have the characters there. The text says "She showed them how to write her name: ĞD." (pg 573). The two characters for Yoko's name should be where the ĞD is.

Now the story is good, but these errors are common enough to be annoying. They would probably not be as annoying if the MSRP hadn't been $19.99, which is higher than the other books in the series.

The Twelve Kingdoms is a wonderful series to read and I own all of the earlier releases of this series, but there just are so many errors in the translation that I've completely lost interest in reading this book. The story is great, but the quality of this translation is very low.

(Note: They also used extremely low quality paper to print this book.)

Advice:

Do not buy this volume of The Twelve Kingdoms until they fix the errors in the translation and just read the free online translation of this arc because compared to that free translation, this translation from Tokyopop is absolutely horrible! Buying this poor translation of the novel will just be a waste of your money.

Why is it horrible?

Like some of the other reviewers stated, there are many grammatical errors and mistakes in this translation. One of the most noticeable errors which I found in the translation was that it would often use the wrong character names all over the place, and that is a seriously grave mistake in its own way. Honestly, if someone new to the story of the Twelve Kingdoms read this volume, it would probably boggle their minds and they'd say, "Huh! Where did this character come from? Aren't they still in that other country?"

In addition, they actually cut out some parts of the storyline! The story literally jumped from Yoko threatening to stab a guy if he did not tell her where Koshou was to her suddenly helping Koshou with the rebellion in Wa, so they left out the section which actually tells you how and why Yoko found herself participating in the Wa rebellion by teaming up with Koshou. (You can find that missing section of the novel over the internet. You just need to search for it.)

First and foremost this has four stars because the story is a great continuation for the saga. If you have read the previous installments and are checking to see if the story is still interesting, then this is your green light. With that being said, for editing it should get one star. Truly the editorial department for this novel should all be seriously reprimanded. It is because the target audience for this novel is young adults that such glaring errors are even more insulting. Kara Stambach, Vy Nguyen, and the entire editorial team need to get back into their professional seats and actually edit their next installment; this edition was a mockery for publishers everywhere.

I completely agree with all the errors mentioned by the earlier reviewers. There's also some inconsistent name translations that I found were aggravating to read through.

For example, Shoukei's mother's name was translated as "Graceful Flower." It would've been more appropriate to not translate it into literal terms (her name should be written as "Kaka"). Thankfully, the readers don't have to deal with Shoukei's name being translated as "Sparkling Jewel" throughout the book.

Another example is with the naming of some places such as the four gates surrounding Takuhou. In the beginning, they mentioned the southern gate as the "Suzaku Gate," which is named after one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations, represented by the Vermillion Bird/Peafowl. Yet, when mentioning the eastern and western gates, they were inconsistently translated as "Blue Dragon Gate" (Seiryuu) and "White Tiger Gate" (Byakko), respectively. Personally, either translations would be fine as long as they kept it consistent, which the translators failed to do so.

I imagine that because this is the largest bound volume released thus far in this series, the translations had to be rushed within a year after the release of the third book. However, I would not have minded if the release date was pushed back a month or two just to give the editor more time for a thorough editing.

Throwing that aside, this is definitely the best book of the series released so far. More character development, more info about the Twelve Kingdom's culture, and definitely more plots and schemes running rampant. You'll be amazed at how the author, Fuyumi Ono, interweaves the story of three girls of the same age into a greater plot. Highly recommended reading, though I'd hold off on Tokyopop's edition.

This volume has the best and most complex story so far, following the story of three different, yet somewhat similar girls (including Yoko, from the first volume). Though they start as three separate tales, the stories collide gradually until the whole picture is drawn into a rebellion against a tyrannic governor. Fuyumi Ono once again transports us into this wonderful and mysterious world that made the previous volumes so intriguing.
There is, however, a huge drawback to this book, which cannot be missed even for a casual reader, and that is the overall quality of the work that went into translating this book. Whether it was due to a lack of time or by choice to cut costs, releasing a novel this poorly produced is completely unacceptable. The occasional typos already present in the previous volumes become more and more frequent near the end of the book, joined by missing words or verbs in the sentences, parts of the sentences put there twice by mistake and basic if/is/as, than/then and your/you're kind of mixups. There's also an occurance of special characters not being rendered properly and replaced by random garbage characters. Names are sometimes swapped. Shoukei's name (one of the three girls), for example, is swapped at least twice with Shoukou's (a tyrannic prefecture governor). Some mistakes make the story harder to follow by swapping place names. There's even a whole chapter that's missing near the end of the volume.
It really is a shame that such a great story received such a poor treatment. It is not known at this time if the paperback that will be released in november will have these issues fixed or not.

I agree with the other reviewers. I loved the story,( the arc has always been my favorite one ever since I watched the anime for the first time) but I am very disappointed with the sloppy editing job.
What happened to the missing scene where Yoko speaks to Koushou? It's an important development in the story in my opinion so I don't understand it could be just left out.

I love this series and can't wait for book 5 to come out. I'm enjoying watching the main character develop. This was my introduction to anime. My daughter said I would love it and she was right. I read the existing books first then watched the anime. I was hooked totally! The art was fabulous. I have always loved cartoons, animation and fantasy art growing up. Now in my mid 50's I have found that most American cartoons are boring and downright ugly. The art is terrible. I have discovered anime and I am hooked. While some of the story lines (Bleach and Inuyasha) may be more geared for a younger crowd, I can overlook it for the great artwork. I'm loving this new "guilty pleasure".

This is my favorite series and I'm so glad the books were translated to English. The translation job is pretty mediocre, but I'm glad that readers outside of Japan are able to experience this wonderful series.

In this book you get to see Youko develop even further as an independent, strong individual as she deals with the burdens and uncertainties of ruling her kingdom. If you've never read the original book or seen the anime, there are a good deal of surprises in this book.

Love the hardcover edition; very collectible.

Well, the translation is not bad, although there are several inaccurate phrases. But the editing is pretty bad, too many errors. And every time I read the words "prophet-king" and "glory-king", had to control the urge to throw the book against the wall...