Aria 4
Posted: April 29, 2009 Filed under: Aria 1 Comment »I’m glad I saved this for today. This series is all about atmosphere, and the nice summer-y stories in this volume made today’s miserable cold bearable.
I love that Cat Sith is a reoccurring character in this series. One of the strangest chapters this time around featured Akari suffering from the heat in the hottest part of summer. She’s got an uncharacteristic miserable look on her face, and is having problem dealing with the mirages such heat brings. And then… time stops and she gets a glass of cold milk. It’s pretty magical.
Akari, Aika, and Alice hang out in pretty much every chapter. They’re training together all summer, so they do pretty much everything together, including vacations to the beach, trips to see the retired great Undine, and throw parties for public holidays.
Actually, the only other chapter where Akari was by herself introduced the Sylphs, the airbike couriers of Neo-Venezia. So now we’ve got the Undines, the Salamanders, the Gnomes, and the Sylphs. Very nice.
But let me stress again how wonderful this series is simply for taking time to stop and smell the roses. Twice in this volume Akari learns the important life lesson of keeping her happy outlook and finding pleasure in everything she does. Much of the events are along the lines of finding beautiful views of the city, locating pretty beaches, and enjoying the company of others. Swimming, bug catching, eating corn-on-the-cob, and choosing wine are some of the simple pleasures the characters savor. It is definitely a unique reading experience.
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