Le Chevalier d’Eon 6
January 22, 2009
Actually, even the tarot card nonsense they started in with last volume is starting to make sense. It helped immensely to see a poet moved up to rank 7 and given the power, rather than having D’Alembert explain it at length as in last volume. It says that there are only 22 people in history that have risen to rank 7, so I assume we’ll run across each, and they’ll all be assigned to a major arcana.
Apparently everyone rank 7 or higher also has an animal helper, be it the vitrol rats from last volume, or a crow, or a freaky mouth, or Nell. And… apparently some poetic… thing is needed to manifest the animal helper, or to get the animal helper to manifest its power? I really didn’t understand why each rank 7 poet had some sort of tagline that had a meaning that was dissected at length… or rather, what bearing that tagline has on the story. I’m sure there’s some indepth explanation as to how it reflects on the poet, but apparently you need to involve the tagline in some sort of wordplay, or have the initials show up, or something, in order to get your animal helper’s powers… I guess? That makes sense for now, at least.
Roble is still the boss of the poets, even after the heavy hints that Saint-Germain was somehow involved. He is, and he’s got some freaky stuff going on, but for now, he seems to be hanging back to see what will happen.
This is mostly stylish fighting again, this time with a rank 7 Emperor poet. Plus the Tower poet gets her powers. Lia and d’Eon are hardly in it, unfortunately. I’m still not really getting tired of the random battles in this series. I’m actually inordinately fond of Le Chevalier d’Eon. It’s got great art, a great premise, the battles are pretty fascinating given the fact they involve a lot of wordplay, the setting is excellent, the plot is moving along at an okay (well, maybe a little slow) pace, and now that all the confusing symbolism from last volume is slowly being made clear, there’s very little for me to complain about. Its biggest flaw is probably that it has a lot more fighting than it should, but I wouldn’t really change that and exchange it for story.
It’s mostly style over substance, but it’s also a great read. I think we’re caught up with Japan now, so I hope I don’t forget everything I’ve come to understand about the tarot cards/rank 7 poets in this volume.
