Whoever Steals This Book Volume 2 Review
Mikura Hall is a famous hall, housing hundreds of books and has been run by Mifuyu’s family for generations. But when someone tries to steal a book from the collection, the town suffers a curse based upon the plot of the book near the taken one. The only way to break the curse is to bring the stolen book back, so Mifuyu and mysterious girl Mishiro, team up to track down the thief before the whole town remains cursed forever.
Based upon the light novel of the same name, Whoever Steals This Book continues in manga form in the thick of the second curse, based upon the detective noir novel Black Book. The girls just escape the police and end up teaming up with the book’s original protagonist, Ricky McCloy, where the town has banned books (like banning alcohol), and so looking for a book thief is hard to do. The third curse is based upon a steampunk novel, where the discovery of a Silver Beast (dragon) and its unique powers has projected the city into a new technological age, and Mifuyu must navigate a dense new world, avoid getting eaten by said beast, and still find time to find the original book thief. The manga is at its strongest when it really leans into the lore and genre of each book. For the detective noir part for example, there’s a hilarious bit where a kindly grandma turns into a ruthless mob boss. You have also shoot-outs, car chases and secret underground organisations hiding from the law. Same goes for the third book; the dragon design is really cool, and massive too, you really feel its weight and power as it completely overwhelms the slaves tasked with clearing up its waste everyday. The town also completely transforms into a deep, intricate steampunk city. I almost wished this was a video game instead, so you could explore each new world and uncover its secrets, as each episode has to rush through the story and interesting set pieces to find the book thief.
The only downside is the added ‘curse’ rule, where all the humans slowly turn into foxes, as well as being cursed to play parts in a book. I got the impression from the first and second curses that it served as a timer, a ticking clock for how long they have to break the curse. But in the third curse, the characters all turn into foxes very quickly and the curse keeps going. I can see it’s meant to serve as another obstacle as it’s hard to find a thief if EVERYONE looks like foxes, but then it’s a double-edged sword where the reader can’t tell who is who either. Even just a small hair style difference for the Mifuyu and Mishiro foxes, to help distinguish them, would have help made the last few chapters less of a struggle for the reader to keep up with the story.
Although there’s a lot of plot progression, there’s some room for development of the characters, but mostly the main heroine. The mysterious Mishiro continues to be mysterious as ever, but also kind and helping Mifuyu through each curse. In the first one, Mishiro really held Mifuyu’s hand throughout, but with each new curse, the pair are separated quicker, so Mifuyu has to think on her own two feet. The pair do have some nice moments however, and the two seem to becoming fast friends. As for Mifuyu, you can see her strength and courage growing in each new wacky scenario she’s thrown into, so it’s satisfying to see her work around each new curse’s rules and be determined to save the town.
As mentioned in Volume 1’s small interview, where the author mentioned they just wanted to write what they wanted to happen, leading to a semi-scattered pacing and story. There’s still some of this in Volume 2, but there is an attempt to help bring it all together. For example someone claiming to be the book thief attempts to connect with Mifuyu, so we now have a face to the ‘villain’ of the piece, but their sneaky attitude leads to a small twist in the latter half of Volume 2, which hopefully we’ll get answers to in the next (and final) volume.
The art continues to be very strong; Kakeru Sora really brings the set pieces and curse genre to life with dark and sharp shadows for the detective noir curse, and complex, oppressive machinery for the steampunk curse. I wish however they gave the girls more outfits; there’s nicely themed outfits in the art between the chapters, but the actual story has them stuck in the stripy tops we see on the cover and it gets a bit boring after a while. Emma Schumacker continues to translate the series, doing a great job of making each book have its own writing style and prose. There are no translation notes but we do get more notes from the original author and the artist this time too.
Whoever Steals this Book isn’t perfect but it’s really trying to be an engaging, Alice in Wonderland-esque adventure with love for books and stories at the centre of it. I look forward to seeing how it will all end.
Our review copy from Yen Press was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.
