James Nicoll Reviews

The Book of Heroes
Miyuki Miyabe (Trans. Alexander O. Smith)
VIZ/Haikasoru
$23.99 USA/ $32.00 CAN/£16.99
352 pages
ISBN: 978 – 1421527758

There are definite similarities between this book and Brave Story but I enjoyed this one more.

Once again, we have a young protagonist who finds themselves caught up a mundane crisis that becomes entangled with supernatural matters; Yuriko Morisake is sent home from school, where she learns that her older brother committed a violent assault on his schoolmates, killing one outright, and is now missing. Nobody has any idea why 14-year-old Hiroki would do this; a popular, accomplished student, he doesn’t seem the sort to suddenly snap.

Unsurprisingly the explanation has a fantastic element, one that ties into what begins as a faintly disturbing cosmology that with time becomes much worse: 

Stories have a life of their own and so do archetypes within them. Thanks to an encounter with magic book, Hiroki got caught up with an archetype known variously as the Hero or the King in Yellow . ​“The Hero” sounds like a positive archetype but at best it is a dangerous and a powerful one and it tends to leave violence and chaos in its wake. Hiroki had the particular bad luck to get possessed by the King in Yellow (the openly malevolent aspect of the Hero) and Yuriko is the only one who has a hope of resolving the situation. 

On the plus side, she’s plucky, given magical vestments, given a quest and slowly accumulates a party of useful allies. On the minus side, she’s a kid, she doesn’t know much, her sources of information are not necessarily trustworthy and the King in Yellow is virtually unstoppable. 

It takes Yuriko some time to actually get to the point where she can set off on her quest; a lot of the book consists of (necessary) Quest Preparation. Despite that this does not get bogged down in exposition; I was never bored.

In this case, shorter was better; this novel is more focused than Brave Story and contains few unnecessary digressions. Miyabe does not seem to be a fan of making things easier for her protagonists; not only is the immediate crisis potentially worlds-threatening but the underpinning cosmology¹ is really depressing if you think about it. Yuriko may be brave but she’s also naive and easily manipulated and her allies take advantage of that; being willing to do what she can to help is no guarantee of a happy ending. 

1: Spinning stories gives rise to other worlds (somewhat like Vision in the previous book). This is actually very bad and everyone who helps keep stories in circulation is actually contributing to making things worse. Storytelling is a sin and the worst storytellers end up trying to make amends in a timeless hell dimension. 

It’s not possible to avoid taking part in the process so humans are all sinners. It’s not possible to avoid doing damage; the best you can hope for is to limit the damage you do. 

It’s an odd point of view to come across in a novel.