YAOI NOVEL REVIEW: Dark Walker

Jennifer LeBlanc AKA Asami's Girl — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:18:41 +0000

Dark Walker – Novel – Recap & Review

The back cover of this novel sums up the story quite nicely so I’m just going to repeat it here and add in my two cents worth after:

“Tomiki Naruse has the strangest dreams. Every night, he finds himself waiting for a phantom lover – whom he has never seen. Tomoki cannot remember his dream lover’s name or face when he wakes each morning, but one thing he does know: Tomoki’s lover is no girl.

Unraveling the mystery of Tomoki’s dream lover leads him to discover the Depths of Dreams, a shadowy world hidden within the darkness, and the realization that he is one of the mythical Dark Walkers – a human born with the ability to “fall” from the real world into the Depths of Dreams with his mind and body intact. With the help of Yuugo Oda, his classmate and fellow Dark Walker, Tomoki begins to harness and control the power within him. Little do they realize the sinister plans set in motion by Tomoki’s appearance in the world of dreams, discovering that, sometimes, fantasy can be just as terrifying as the real world.”

Overall, I thought the plot was pretty good. There were some twists and turns along the way and the storyline is different from what we usually get although the two main characters are junior high students and some of the story centers around school. I felt the story really started to pick up more once the antagonist is introduced into the story but that isn’t until almost two-thirds of the way in. The ending was fast paced and I think the author resolved the story nicely, if not a bit abruptly considering what the one character actually goes through.

As far as the actual structure of the book, we are given the pretty typical one color page and ten black and white illustrations; all of which are nicely done. The characters are attractive and stick to the somewhat typical seme/uke roles even with their looks. The author uses some pretty good imagery although once she seems to have given a detailed description of something, she tends to use it more than once with the exact wording, which is a little odd. Also, in the beginning whenever she refers to the mystery lover, she always puts “he” or “him” in quotes to the point of being a bit annoying. The translation was well done and there are only a handful of spelling errors or missing words, although I did notice them as I was reading. As far as the sexual content, there are a good amount of sex scenes but they are not graphically described as some novels have them. There are only two scenes that are rather graphic in their descriptions so if you like your sex scenes to be described in a more flowery way, you’ll like this book. Overall, it was a good read. Not the best I’ve seen but not the worst. I would probably recommend renting it or borrowing from a friend before shelling out the money to see if you like it.

Character Design = B+ (cute but typical)

Plot = B+

Book Design/Illustrations = B+

Sexual Content = B (there but not very graphic)

Translation = B+ (enough missing/misspelled words to be noticeable but not overly distracting)

Overall Grade = B+

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The Yaoi Review » Hikaru Yura

YAOI NOVEL REVIEW: Dark Walker