The Betrayal Knows My Name, Volume 6 by Hotaru Odagiri

Fiction

My favorite pair is still alive! Everyone is still alive actually. I do have a feeling that at least one of the main characters is going to die because of something that was mentioned in the previous volume. I don’t think this series will have a completely happy ending. I’m going to go ahead and predict that Luka will die, either by his own hand or someone else’s, Takashiro might die either from his demon or he might kill himself to end his suffering, or maybe Sairi, I just get a kind of suspicious feeling about him. 

I’m starting to feel really bad for Yuki. We’ve known from the beginning that he has been an orphan since he was a newborn, and we thought we knew the circumstances, but it turns out that he has been lied to. It seems like he will learn the real truth in the next volume considering a few members of the zweilt told him a little bit of the real story. There are only two very thin volumes left and I am wondering how they are going to wrap everything up, it seems like there aren’t enough pages left to complete the story. I hope it isn’t rushed, I really dislike it when a great story gets pushed along too quickly.

The Betrayal Knows My Name, Volume 5 by Hotaru Odagiri

Fiction

For the few followers I have, I apologize for going missing for a few weeks. I had surgery and I needed some time to heal. I had anticipated reading a lot while I was confined to my bed but it turns out it is really difficult to read when you are physically exhausted and taking pain medication that makes you want to sleep all day.

I started off easy after my resting period and continued on with The Betrayal Knows My Name. The first half of the book is pretty light hearted, the whole crew goes on a trip to the baths and they have a fun time. But the second half gets dark and makes me worried. I am very concerned about the future of one half of my favorite pair. I finished the book in one night because I thought we would see the conclusion to this conflict, but the author left it on a huge cliffhanger. I really had to control myself to not pick up the next volume as soon as I woke up this morning and skip work all together. The next volume is much smaller than the first five, in fact, the final three volumes are half the size of the first five. I hope we aren’t left with any loose ends. But, I think that if something really awful happens in the beginning of the next volume that the zweilt will be motivated to end the centuries long battle and we could see an end to everything rather quickly. I’ll be back either this Friday or next Tuesday with an update, I’m happy to be back.

Suicide: A Study In Sociology by Emile Durkheim

Nonfiction

First published in 1897, this book, also considered a case study, dives deep into the social factors that can compel an individual to become suicidal. With over two dozen tables to be found over the course of three books, you fully appreciate the amount of time and care that went into analyzing the data and organizing it in a cohesive way. I also very much enjoy the detailed appendix at the end of the book. Even though I took notes, a lot of notes, more notes than I usually take when I read a book, I found the detailed appendix to be incredibly useful when I wanted to go back and read about a concept again. While some of the ideas are not relevant today, most of these ideas being about a woman’s role and place in society, most of the author’s observations about the influence that society has on the individual are still pertinent. 

I am very happy that John A. Spaulding and George Simpson took the time to translate this book from French to English, because then I would never have been able to read this and learn as much as I did. Besides learning, and although this is a book about a sociological issue, it raises some philosophical ideas. I found myself constantly thinking about points the author made, wondering why certain things are the way they are, and how certain circumstances are still in place in society today. Plights faced by mankind in the 19th century are ones that we still face today. It makes you wonder, will these difficulties always exist for certain people within our society? This book makes me ponder a lot of things and ask a lot of what if questions. I like books that make me think, and this one certainly makes me think a lot.

The Betrayal Knows My Name, Volume 4 by Hotaru Odagiri

Fiction

In volume 4 we meet the final members of the zweilt, a male and female pair named Sairi and Lia who just arrived back in town after being on a mission overseas. With the exception of Kuroto, who resigned from a promising semi professional gaming career, Sairi and Lia are the only other two who have not kept out of the public eye. I am wondering how they are going to go about doing official business in their home country, where they are most famous, while not letting anyone figure out that they are powerful warriors trying to defeat an otherworldly evil. I also hope to see more about how their relationship came about and what the future holds for them, they are the second pair of zweilt that were not partners in their previous life, one of their partners having been killed and unable to be saved for reincarnation. 

Besides the new characters, there are more battles and the promise of more secrets and information about the past to be revealed. 

I am now halfway through the collected volumes and I am not looking forward to it being over so soon. I might have to find a way to watch the anime. I have been thinking about subscribing to Crunchyroll or something similar so that I can watch all the manga that I read. I think at the end of this series I will have made a decision.

The Betrayal Knows My Name, Volume 3 by Hotaru Odagiri

Fiction

Yuki and Zess get orders from their leader Takashiro to travel to another one of their residences to meet some of the other clan members. We end up meeting some of Yuki’s actual blood relatives as well as more zweilt. But even with the introduction of new characters, this has been the least interesting volume for me, mostly because I didn’t really enjoy the side story, so much so that I won’t even get into it. I did enjoy learning about two of the newest zweilt, Senshirou and Kuroto, and it was nice to learn about their backstory in one volume rather than having to go through two volumes. They are a really cute yet tragic pairing. The volume ends with a lot of little extra comics that don’t have anything to do with the story, they are just for fun. I always enjoy the silly stuff the author puts at the end of the book.

I’m really into this series right now, and even though I am really busy this week I think I will finish volume 4 in time for another bonus Friday review. I often go long periods of time forgetting that I own a decent collection of manga and that it is a category of reading material all together. This series is reminding me how much I enjoy the genre and it is encouraging me to branch out and find new series to consider reading.