A Fox’s Love: Part I of the American Kitsune Series – I finished this tale several months ago and, overall, I found it to be a fun and humorous read. Brandon Varnell has authored a book (the beginning of his American Kitsune series) in which the plot revolves around Japanese Shonen manga. Fans of this unique literary style will most likely enjoy this read.
Opening the book, the reader will immediately meet Kevin Swift; a boy living with his mom in Phoenix, Arizona – a teenager who feels that he has a rather boring life. His young life consists of early morning newspaper deliveries, high school classes Monday through Friday and many, many hours of free time spent watching love-filled Shonen manga movies.
As luck would have it though, the fragile monotony of Kevin’s life is about to be upset – and permanently at that. He had just finished his newspaper route one morning, when he stumbled across the cutest little fox. The only problem – it was seriously injured. Being an animal lover, Kevin bundled up the fox and brought it home with him in an attempt to help the animal recover. Unfortunately, Kevin still needed to get to school; which meant that he left anything the fox might need within its reach, prior to departing for his day. But when he returned home later that afternoon – he could swear that the fox’s skin had woven part of itself back together. Too exhausted to dwell on the oddity, Kevin fell asleep on the couch.
Needless to say, I’m certain that you can well imagine Kevin’s shock upon waking the next day – only to discover the fox gone and a beautiful (and naked) girl in the house instead. Let me also mention that this ‘girl’ sports a lovely red tail (or two).
I don’t want to provide any additional story information (no one enjoys unasked for spoilers), but for the most part A Fox’s Love was an interesting and unique read. It was indeed fun and humorous (as the author had promised me) although, to be fair, I did struggle with two things.
First and foremost, would have to be the spelling (and overabundance) of the word: “anyways.” While I do understand that “anyways” is ‘technically’ a word (an extremely informal version of “anyway”), within the confines of written text “anyway” is generally the industry preferred standard.
My other challenge was that oftentimes the exact explanation for something was repeatedly used throughout the book. It would have read better (or easier) if something like: “as previously mentioned, …” had been added to preface these repeated statements/explanations. This way, it doesn’t come across to the reader as if the author had forgotten what he had already explained in multiple prior passages and/or chapters.
In summary though, if the reader can overlook some novice writing mistakes from a new author – then I’m certain that he, or she, will enjoy A Fox’s Love; especially if the reader is a fan of anime or manga style adventures.
Review first published: http://blogcritics.org/book-review-a-foxs-love-part-i-of-the-american-kitsune-series-by-brandon-varnell/