The spookiest ( )

Finally, The Dreaming Volume 3 concludes the story.

Where did the ghostly girls come from? And what do they want? Before the students know it, the missing girls enter the school, where Amber spots Millie, who speaks to her almost as if to warn her of something. Is there more to this supernatural mystery than just the school itself? The answers to why these girls have come back and what caused their death are revealed in this haunting series finale.

This final instalment mostly focusses on Jeanie and Ms Anu gradually unravelling the mysteries of the school. And a side note I didn't really think about until this Volume, it's nice to see a story where the main characters are Asian and Indigenous rather than defaulting to Anglo.

Of course it turns out there's more to the weird goings on at the school than there initially seemed and — no spoilers — there was a twist I didn't see coming. Oh and there was more creepiness, building on what was already established in the earlier two volumes.

Overall I quite enjoyed reading this manga. It's quite different, especially in form, to anything else I've read and I'll definitely be seeking out other work by Chan in the future. (Perhaps starting with Small Shen in collaboration with Kylie Chan, or maybe her Legend of Zelda fancomic.) I highly recommend The Dreaming to fans of horror/dark fantasy, including those who might not usually read manga.

I'm also interested in checking out a few other manga authors if anyone has any suggestions as to where to go from here. (Though I won't be switching over from predominantly text-based reading any time soon.)

4.5 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog. ( )

No better, no worse than the first two. Ends pretty strangely. ( )

The Little Bookworm

When twins Jeanie and Amber are sent to Greenwich Private College in Australia, they expect it will be a regular school. Things quickly turn creepy as the sisters are told to pretend they are not twins and start dreaming the same dreams. As they delved further into the history of the school and the rumors of haunting and missing girls, the twins start to realize that the key might be in their dreams.

I went ahead and read all three since manga are short and it's only a three part series. This is some creepy stuff right here. The first volume is the introduction to the story with one of the twins getting weirded out right away at their new boarding school. Then they have the same dream about the bushland that surrounds the school and girls with knifes. The second and third volume give more history of the school and the disappearances that have happened over the years with the very creepy back story of the vice-principal. At first, it seemed that the story was going to devolve into some lame fairy tale, but then it takes a sharp turn at what? and then stops at nightmarish so I was actually somewhat surprised at the end. Though there was a storyline that feels like it was dropped somewhere along the way and I'm not quite sure what happened there at the end.

As far the artwork, it is typical manga style although with more creepy eyes than I have read before. I had some trouble with who was who until I realized that Jeanie always has a ponytail and then I got it. I think it is hard to draw twins and not have confusion though. The art really did add to the overall effect the story was going for and the paintings inside of the school were majorly horrible (like in scary, not in poorly drawn or anything). ( )

The conclusion to the sppoky series by Queenie Chan sees the drama unfold an all the different parts finally tie together. The full story of the school is revealed when Jeanie meets up with the missing Mrs Skeener. We also hear parts of the story from Amber as she relates her dream of Millie. The story adds fairy tale elements to spirits from Aboriginal folklore. We meet spirits from "The Dreaming", the Quinkan who steal the souls of sleeping children and can possess people.

I adored this series and loved the ending which was very creepy in keeping with the whole tone of the series. As always the artwork was stunning and I plan on photocopying some of the pages to colour in. Possibly my favourite manga series so far, I don't want to say too much more about it and risk spoiling too much of the plot. I will definitely be visiting Chan's website and seeing what else she has been working on. Japan meets Australis by someone from Hong Kong, highly recommended. ( )