Blood+ Volume 1 (v. 1)
Blood+is a little bit of everything for everyone. As a franchise, there are two video games, soundtracks, a cartoon series, three comics and two novel series. Likewise, this first volume of the graphic novel series is a mix of mystery, vampire horror, high school romance and government intervention. Saya is a high school girl suffering from amnesia. In this volume, she's recruited for a part in the school play, hunted down by a boyish vampire, hidden by a secret sector of the government and finds out that she is an immortal and the only one who can kill the demonic monsters that threaten them. She also realizes that she's forged a special bond with her adoptive bad-boy brother, Kai. There are many strands at work in this opener, each given equal weight, which may work for the differentBlood+products out on the market but weakens this story. With so much going on, the reader is pulled in too many directions at once and the overall reading experience distracts and detracts from the story. However, this could be a good book to have open while updating a MySpace page and IMing friends on the Nintendo DS Light.(Feb.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.