MANGA CLASSICS: THE STORIES OF EDGAR ALLAN POE ~ 4.0 STARS|| NETGALLEY BOOK REVIEW.

Reviewing books is really hard work for bloggers but they feel happy reviewing a book if the book is worth an enjoyable read. But sometimes it so happens that a book reader in the excitement of a new book forgets to check the description and buys or requests a book that is a little different and hard to understand and read but does not regret it. Allow me to take you through my experience of the Japanese version of the Edgar Allan Poe’s stories.

So let’s start, shall we?

Manga Classics: The Stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

I, sincerely thank Udon Entertainment and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Book Description:

Author: Edgar Allan Poe.

Publisher: Udon Entertainment.

Genre: Comics & Graphics Novels, Teen & YA.

Chapter: 4 stories and 1 poem.

Pages: 308

Series: Dont think so.

Time: 5 hours and 30 minutes.

Year wrote: 27th October 2017.

Book Summary:

The Stories of Edgar Allan Poe is a brilliant collection of some of his best-known stories: The Tell-Tale Heart (a murder’s haunting guilt), The Cask of Amontillado (a story of brilliant revenge), and The Fall of the House of Usher (an ancient house full of very dark secrets). Also included in this collection are The Mask of the Red Death (horrors of `the Plague’), and the most famous of all his poems: The Raven (a lover’s decline into madness). Best read in a dimly-lit room with the curtains drawn, Poe’s brilliant works come to life in darkly thrilling ways in this Manga Classic adaptation.

Summary from Amazon.com.

Critics Ratings:

Goodreads: 4.0 stars.

Amazon.com: 4.5 stars.

Taken from the official sites.

My Summary:

A book containing 5 stories of Edgar Allan Poe is an extreme delight to all the readers. The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Mask of the Red Death and The Raven. This is a Japanese style comic book that has the starting at the end of the book. It has graphics that describe the characters the author wanted to display.

Book information:

I know the summary is weird. I have no way to describe it except it is a Japanese style comic with graphics and it starts at the end of the book. Confused?? Let me explain.

This print that I received from Udon Entertainment was a comic book. The comic book contained pictures of the surrounding that the author has described and bubbles contained thoughts. In the email that I received, they told me that the book starts at the end. It means the book contains 307 pages, go to page 307 and read backwards. Start from 307 and go to 306, 305 304…until page number 1.

In Japan, books are read backwards and as this is a Japanese classic, the book is backward to forward. The format is explained in the book.

Now that I have explained to you everything. Let me review the book, shall I?

My Review:

4 stars, A SHOULD-TRY.

The book has great stories, the publishers chose the best stories from all the stories written by Edgar Allan Poe. The new concept that I tried. I enjoyed it. I requested this novel thinking it is a normal comic and I really wanted to try a comic and review it. I am trying my best to push myself out of my comfort zone and this book did a great job in it.

I thoroughly enjoyed the stories and loved the vocabulary used, I saw no mistakes anywhere. I was pleased with the graphics and everything was good. You should definitely try it if you like comics. I highly recommend this to comic readers.

As all good things have negative sides too, this book had too. I did not like the plain black and white graphics, although yes it has it’s own beauty, I felt that it missed the colourful touch that would bring the stories to life. I missed was confused while reading the last story of the book, the Fall of The House of Usher. I didn’t know what’s going on until the end and I didn’t like it.

Now to my main problem, I will be brutal sorry for the inconvenience caused by me to the publishers but I hated the font and size of the words. I have glasses with 0.5 in each eye. While reading this story I had to stress my eyes so much that they started paining. If I going through such stress with minor glasses, how would you expect other readers to enjoy your ebook format with such tiny words?

I was extremely displeased with the format, font and size of the words but I loved the description and words used in the story that made it easy for young readers to read with please too.

I give this book a 4-star rating because of its good story selection and the hard work they out to create a great atmosphere in the story. My favourite stories were The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado. I take the 1.0 stars because of the small fonts, size and pain it caused to my eyes.

I hope you enjoyed my review. It’s an extremely new and different type of comic and novel. It is worth a try. If you are pushing your comfort zone, I don’t think there could be a better way than trying a comic. We all read books, let’s try comics.

That’s it for today. Like, share, and follow my blog for more reviews on great comics and novels.

Signing Out_X.

Thank you so much for your valuable time.