View Single Post
Old 2009-03-05, 11:45   Link #56
Doraneko
The Owl of Minerva
 
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
My pleasure to spread the love towards Kougyoku's stories :P.

Mimizuku is a unique specie in the light novel world. On a shelf full of light novels with cute and attractive covers, it may look incredibly plain at a glance. But frankly it is one of the most beautiful stories I have ever read.

Despite the story being relatively simple and short when compared with many popular light novel series, you can feel the author's painstaking efforts and love in crafting the characters and giving them true emotions. Kougyoku spends as much as one year on each book she has released: an incredibly slow turnover rate indeed in the LN industry. However this may also be a contributing factor to the high standard of quality prevalent in all of her works.

Mimizuku is the first book in her man-eater series. The second one in the series is MAMA, and the last one is 雪蟷螂 (Yukikamakiri) which was just released a few weeks ago.



MAMA is as good as Mimizuku and I would sincerely recommend it to you. As for 雪蟷螂, I haven't got it yet, but the readers' comments are overwhelmingly positive. I very much look forward to reading it.

Btw it is interesting that Kougyoku's books are incrementally moving closer and closer to the general "light novel style" in terms of appearance.

Mimizuku: a complete departure from the norm, with no illustrations inside and an oil painting covers.

MAMA: comes with a stylish cover with slight manga influence, a colour foldup with anime style drawings, and no illustrations between pages.

Yukikamakiri: comes with a cover that screams light novel. Readers report that there are pretty good illustrations inside too.


With a "normal" cover and no illustrations, Mimizuku can easily lure booklovers in the general public who enjoy well-written and moving stories to enter the light novel world. Incremental increases in light novel features can disarm their stubborn resistance towards light novels. After finishing the whole series, most of them should have been "converted."

Well, seems like every single step in the light novel publishing business is highly strategical .
Doraneko is offline   Reply With Quote