Frieren and Rusch
May. 4th, 2026 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearFrieren: Beyond Journey's End follows an elven mage on a journey to try and get to know humans better, years after she was part of a band of heroes that defeated the demon king.
I was a bit apprehensive going in, since the style and humour of manga doesn't always work for me - but Volume 1 in particular was really lovely. Very contemplative, with great depth of emotion and only occasional bits of humour to lighten the tone.
There was also a very interesting exploration of how different lifespans affect attitudes to time, purpose and death.
Volume 2 was a lot darker and more violent, and Volume 3 felt very meandering and rather silly - but I still enjoyed them and plan to continue the series at least for a bit longer.
Search and Recovery by Kristine Kathryn Rusch is Book 11 in the Retrieval Artist univers, though Book 4 in the Anniversary Day subseries. I've mostly really enjoyed this whole set of books so far (with a couple of dips) but this one was disappointing. Rather than moving on from the end of Book 10, it went back in time to the start of the Anniversary Day section of the story and seemed to retread a lot of old ground without really revealing anything new. There were seven viewpoint characters in 225 pages, which felt like a lot, and the stories within this particular book didn't reach any sort of conclusion, so it felt weirdly transitional and also suggests we won't be going back to the 'present' of the story in the next book either. A real shame.
I was a bit apprehensive going in, since the style and humour of manga doesn't always work for me - but Volume 1 in particular was really lovely. Very contemplative, with great depth of emotion and only occasional bits of humour to lighten the tone.
There was also a very interesting exploration of how different lifespans affect attitudes to time, purpose and death.
Volume 2 was a lot darker and more violent, and Volume 3 felt very meandering and rather silly - but I still enjoyed them and plan to continue the series at least for a bit longer.
Search and Recovery by Kristine Kathryn Rusch is Book 11 in the Retrieval Artist univers, though Book 4 in the Anniversary Day subseries. I've mostly really enjoyed this whole set of books so far (with a couple of dips) but this one was disappointing. Rather than moving on from the end of Book 10, it went back in time to the start of the Anniversary Day section of the story and seemed to retread a lot of old ground without really revealing anything new. There were seven viewpoint characters in 225 pages, which felt like a lot, and the stories within this particular book didn't reach any sort of conclusion, so it felt weirdly transitional and also suggests we won't be going back to the 'present' of the story in the next book either. A real shame.
