I had to do some searches online to confirm this, since all the book tells me (on the copyright info page, or "verso of the title page" in cataloger-speak) is that it's the second book in a series, but it looks like this book and the others in the series inspired the anime and not the other way around. I've seen the first few episodes of the anime, so some of this book felt very familiar to me.

I must say, overall, I prefer what I remember of the anime to this book - maybe it's due to sloppy translation, but it reads like clunky fan fiction. I can see why someone might read this and think it would make a great anime, though. The interaction between Raquel, Shannon, and Pacifica is often a nice combination of sweet and amusing. When Raquel used her powers, particularly when she temporarily turned Shannon into a sorcerer and combined her powers with his, I wanted to hunt the anime down so that I could rewatch those parts. Shannon's fight scenes had the same effect on me (and I couldn't help but imagine everything he said in the book said in Crispin Freeman's voice). The bittersweet moments that came up occasionally were nice too, like the revelation that Shannon gave up his dream of being a musician in order to devote himself to keeping Pacifica safe.

So, there are flashes of things in this book that excited me, but all they really did was make me want to watch the anime. The book itself was, overall, mediocre. Were there no anime counterpart, I'm not sure I could've gotten past the clumsy, clunky writing. And the thing is, there's a reason why I didn't watch the entire anime, even though I like the artwork, thought the fight scenes were pretty good, and love Crispin Freeman's voice (yes, he is one of my voice actor crushes). I'm not a huge fan of series that start off looking like pure fantasy genre stuff and turn into some kind of strange sci-fi/fantasy mix. Liking the first few episodes of the anime got me through this book, but I can't see myself managing to get through however many others have been translated into English with just that to sustain me. From what I can see, only the first three volumes of the series have been translated into English and released in the U.S., so I guess it's a good thing I'm not craving the whole rest of the series.

Are there circumstances under which I would recommend this book to someone? Sure. If I met someone who was a huge fan of the anime, I might recommend this book. I might also recommend this to general fans of anime and manga - after all, that's the reason I picked this up. It's a quick read, short and very fast-paced, so it's not like it's a huge trial to get through. I didn't like it that much, but it didn't involve so great of a time commitment that I resent having read it. And reading about Shannon in a dress was kind of fun. If that part was in the anime, I can't remember it, so I had lots of fun imagining it.

(Original review, with read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )