Reason for Reading: The dark planet intrigued me but mostly the
plot revolves around mail carriers and I {ahem} really like getting
mail, so thought this sounded cool. Plus the cover is
gorgeous.
Comments: Amberground is a dark planet divided into three rings
separated by rivers which also separates the classes. In the middle
of the planet is Akatsuki, the city of the government and wealthy.
No one may enter without extremely hard to get special passes.
Above Akatsuki is a man-made sun which glows down on the city
bathing it in light. Across the river live the middle classes and
across another live the lower classes, the further you go from
Akatsuki and its man-made sun the darker the perpetual night-time
sky becomes. It is in this world that the Letter Bees carry mail
from one end to the other, they have special passes to cross the
bridges and must traverse the dangerous lands inhabited by Gaichuu,
huge insect like creatures completely covered in metal armour. Here
we meet Gauche Suede, 18yos, on his way to pick up a letter but
when he gets there he finds that the letter he must deliver is a
child, Lag, who does not believe he has been abandoned to be
delivered to his aunt.
I really enjoyed this manga story. Gauche is very determined and
respective of his honourable job as Letter Bee, but Lag creates
animosity between them right from the start and this is an ongoing
source for humour to contrast the darker aspects of the story. Both
Gauche and Lag have back-stories that are revealed during their
journey showing the difficult, emotional situations each is dealing
with separately. Of course what would a journey over dangerous
terrain be without monsters to fight? And so Gauche and Lag find
themselves often attacked by the Gaichuu in which there is no
defence against except a special gun that all Letter Bees carry
which, with concentration, will shoot a part of their heart energy
at the insect-like creatures and reduce them to nothing. It is
during one of these battles that a unique ability of Lag's is
found. Part Two gets even better which takes place five years later
and concentrates on Lag along with the introduction of a fabulous
female character, Niche. I loved the plot, lots of story threads
going on and the book ends on an exciting note leaving the reader
anxious for the next volume. I also enjoyed the artwork, Lag is
cute and Gauche while possibly slightly ambiguous was obviously a
male to me. Many scenes of the terrain and background brought the
desolation of the planet to the reader. The only thing that
bothered me were the fight scenes lasted a little on the long side,
sometimes too many pages of nothing but BAM, CLICK, WWHOOSH, AAAA,
CLANK. These I skipped over, I got the point. In all, I really
enjoyed the mixture of humour, darkness and plot. I'll be reading
Vol. 2 shortly.