Welcome back to Manga Month...or sooner. The amount it time it takes me to read Manga is much less an actual book so it might not be a month but expect me to at least finish up the titles I have on my book shelf. So where were we...oh yes.
Welcome back to the Paper Trail in the celebration of Manga, this time we are going to talk about the Shadow Wing series as we look into The Dragons of Outland (volume 1 of the series). Now I am going to specify that I do not play WoW, nor follow the story close enough to consider myself solid within the universe to claim to know all the details, so I am coming at this simply as a fresh point of view.
Our story involves our hero meeting up with a friend who just so happens to be a blue dragon that can turn into a human form every now and again. They go together after a message was intercepted from Lord Trueblade requiring urgency to a demon attack. The story takes great pleasure in not telling us anything having multiple pages of characters giving action to events that we are told are very uncharacteristic of them and just accept that it will be explained to us later down the line.
For a first volume it does not give too much away of the plot but instead gives us a lot of action instead. There are reasons the characters simply move from set piece to set piece, fight some enemies and move on. What story we do have is having our hero attempt to gain redemption for past actions (which are not explained) to regain the power of light.
Our evil foe however dealt with the same predicament and instead of searching for redemption simply changed sides since it was easier for him to do. The main goal from this story is to go and expand the empire to a portal that will allow easy access to the main land to go and take over the world. To accomplish this he uses the help from Orcs that are reluctant to serve but are honored to do so.
As for the beginning of a story, it does discuss the characters well and gives motivation (on the surface level) to what is driving them in this story. The action is fast paced and plentiful to encourage a sense of war and constant threat in this story, but the dialogue is suspect at best. Many things are said and you are often just as confused as the characters as to what is going on, the ending of this book uncovers the plot on how our villains are going to take over the world with...Shadow Wing. Which one could guess by looking at the cover of the book or knowing the title of this Manga series.
This is a tentative recommendation at best. If you are into WoW and want to explore the origins of Shadow Wing then by all means the story is going to get you interested in it. However if you are an outsider who really isn't into the lure of WoW, this might not be the best jumping off point for the series in manga form. Until next time, take care.
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