Customer Reviews

Vampire Hunter D Volume 7: Mysterious Journey to the North Sea, Part One

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Volume 7 is where things really get interesting. Everything before this was just a warm up. For the bead. You don't know about the bead? Hey, you have not lived until you understand the bead. The bead is LIFE.
Well, somebody thinks so, because people are willing to kill for the bead from the North Sea. And now D has it.
Action, adventures, wet Nobles, lots of salt water. I'm not trying to be funny, I just don't want to drop any spoilers on the first part of two parter. That's right, we end with a cliffhanger that makes other cliffhangers look like bumps in the ground.

I LOVE THESE BOOKS, HOWEVER, Has anyone noticed how the translator overuses the words "vermillion" and "gorgeous"? it's the only thing that bothers me about this series. If there had only been 1 or 2 books I would probably not even have noticed the frequent uses of these two words; however, by book 9, I am very very very weary of these two choice of words. Infact, I began to count how many times they come up on in each book.

If you are a native japanese reader and have read these books in japanese, how is the translation? Does Kikuchi-San use the japanese equivalent of these words in a similar fashion?

This story is quit complex and I can see why this is a maybe for the next Vampire Hunter D movie. It wasn't your usually Vampire Hunter D story, where the girl falls for D and seem to suffer from "Oh save me baby" sysdrome. The main girl in this story isn't your perfect beauty either. She seem to have very muscluar body, not perfect body.

The story has many characters, and one might get confuess whom is whom. Many of a times I confues Glen with D. But at the end all is clear.

D travels to fishing village called Florence, where the dying Win-Lu told D to go find her sister Su-In. There, D meets many colorful charcters. That all have plans to go after this one small bead. Yes, the trouble is over a bead. The bad guys, are back stabbing each other while they are trying to get the bead from D, which Su-In trusted him with.

I really liked reading this story, because it showed D not perfect, he is a dark hero that gets wounded and makes mistakes. Throughout half the story D fights without his left hand.

Yes, in this story, D loses his hand for a while. In this story the left hand becomes the hero and does get kidnapped by the bad guys.

As I have said, this story is quit different from the others. There's a lot of twist and turns. I am not going to say much, you'll have to read it for yourself.

Like all the Vampire Hunter D books, this is set in the year 12090AD. The incredibly handsome and beautiful D again comes across a nubile teenage girl who manages to gain his services and become her protector. There are the usual bad guys with superhuman powers who arent able to match D in looks, knowledge, or fighting skill. All in all, a pretty formula type of book.

But I liked it :)

As this is Book 7 in the series, I assume you are aware that this book is an English translation of the original written in Japanese in the 1980's. Because of this, the sentence structure and wording is a bit, let us say, wonky?

But I think it gives the series a bit of charm and uniqueness. Whatever the reason, I like it and this book is a good fantasy read.

I'm looking forwards to the next one!

This is the first part of the first of the two-volume Vampire Hunter D tales (according the afterward by the author, there are currently two other double volume tales), this book floats along at a leisurely pace with no real push toward resolution, which may frustrate some readers.

There is really no coquette in this particular novel, for even though D does encounter and become employed by the older sister (Su-In) of the "beautiful girl" of the book's tagline; she lacks the helplessness and desperation that marks so many of the other distressed damsels.

The primary themes of this installment are nostalgia and destiny. The nobility in this book are mourned by Su-In as beautiful monsters who were never really much different than humans, even for all their violence and genetic dabbling. She looks back on the past with the wistful longing-loathing with which we often associate with Victorian England.

I'm very much looking forward to the resolution of this story, which will be relased in September, if the back of the book is at all reliable.

The book was amazing. This was one of four books I ordered and only two were even in remotely good condition.