First off, I need to say that this is not manga, but a manga-inspired comic produced by KOSEN, a art studio in Spain. Unfortunately, I bought this unknowingly thinking it was real manga, however I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt. I decided to post a review here anyway to warn anyone else since few sites that list it actually note that its not real manga.
This volume has three stories. The art in the first story is okay, but it degrades through the second story, and the art in the 3rd story in this volume is just plain ugly.
For a quick summary, story one deals with Sastre, a Guardian who is requested to protect Prince Anel during a journey. As soon as he sees Sastre, the man loving Prince decides he wants him, inciting the jealousy of his main lover, and servant, Kaleth. For the journey, Sastre makes Anel go as his squire, since no one knows what the prince looks like. Anel chooses Kaleth to be the fake prince, making Kaleth even more annoyed since it means his certain death. Sastre, however, seems far more interested in guarding Kaleth instead of his prince. During an attack, all heck breaks loose and Anel ends up in enemy hands being played with by the leader (whose surprised to find Anel is enjoying the "torture"), while Kaleth is in the hands of another Guardian. When Sastre goes to the rescue, though, its not his prince he looks for. Of course, then the story ends and you're supposed to get volume 2 to read the rest. *rolls eyes*
Story two is "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." When a mysterious Green Knight challenges a group to kill him in one blow, Gawain takes his king's place, and finds his life promised to the Knight when the Knight calmly picks up his head after getting it chopped off. The Knight gives him one year to get his affairs in order, then Gawain must deliver himself to the Knight for death. While trying to find the Green Knight, Gawain gets caught in a snow storm and collapses. When he awakes he is in the care of Bercilak de Hautdesert and his wife. Bercilak tells him he is close to the Knight and begs him to spend his last four days there. Gawain agrees and they end up doing some betting that eventually leads to them sleeping together and Bercilak professing his love. Gawain can not go back on his word, though, so off he goes to die, only to discover things weren't what they seemed.
Story three just plain sucks. Wade, who is blind and gay, catches the eye of a guy in a store one day. Wade is mildly interested in Lukas, but Lukas isn't the nice guy he pretends to be. He sneaks out to Wade's lake house and waits for him to be alone. He manages to sweet talk his way into the house, lures Wade outside, and rapes him, with a thinly veiled threat to make Wade's sister disappear. The only odd part of the whole story is at the end, Wade has his sister program Lukas number into his phone, though I think it was more from fear than anything else, since he was doing multiple showers and could barely stop crying after wards. It is stories like those that make people thing women who read yaoi are just looking to read rape fantasies. The whole thing just sucked. I have a few that are semi-rapes, but its obvious that the one saying no, doesn't mean it, while its was very obvious in this story that Wade was scared and really meant NO. Ugh.
Half this book is wasted on extra stories so that you "have" to get volume 2 if you were interested enough in the first story to want more. And more of it is wasted on 15 pages of advertising! If you like MICs, you might like this, but if you like real manga, you'll probably be disappointed. I will be selling off my volume as soon as I can (presuming anyone would pay for it). For future reference, don't trust anything from YaoiPress as being real manga...apparently all they do is MIC.
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