Soulless the manga

Soulless (the Manga) Volumes 1 and 2 by Gail Carriger, 470 pages

I stumbled upon this manga series while perusing the graphic novel section at Central. Intrigued that it was not with the other manga in the teen lounge I picked it up. It further caught my attention as it was about vampire, werewolves and ghosts being part of a Victorian era London. Just from reading the small blurb on the cover I could tell there would be some type of romantic storyline as well. Having nothing to read at the time I decided to try it.

It is a Western manga, meaning that it was not written in Japan and translated like the majority of Manga. It also reads left to right like a normal book, which took some getting used to having read only Japanese manga thus far. The story itself turned out to be interesting and action packed. I particularly liked that Carriger doesn’t portray the vampires and werewolves in the stereotypic manner. Here we see exceptionally dressed werewolves and vampires that pride themselves in keeping a very positive public opinion. They don’t kill people and won’t feed on someone without permission. We also don’t see the lust to convert everyone to their side or to rule the world.

Overall I enjoyed the manga, but since it does have some adult situations I can see why it might be excluded from the teen lounge. I was also informed by Nathan that it is based off a book series by Carriger so I might read that in the future.