Been wanting to check out this book for a while now and glad I did. Ended up finishing it within the same night I started reading it, so I was hooked on seeing what happened in each of the short story vignettes the book is composed of. I’m a big romance story fan so I was happy to see a lot of different takes on that kind of story, even if some of them were less than ideal. Not every romance is going to be 100% cutesy and fluffy, though there are a good few stories like that in here. My personal favorites were The Hunter and the Hunted, The Cold-Blooded and the Warm-Blooded, and Beast and Man. Especially as someone who has a lot of lizard characters, The Cold-Blooded and the Warm-Blooded was very sweet to me. The author does a good job of incorporating the character’s animal characteristics into each of the stories and even has a little graphic at the end of each story telling you a bit more about them. I felt like I was getting to immediately research when I encounter an animal species I don’t recognize or know anything about in a furry story, so that was very appreciated. I also loved the art in this book. Being a manga, there’s a lot to be said with how the layouts and panels help to convey the characters emotions. All in all, I’d say it’s a solid book. My biggest criticism is that it’s set in a magic school and very little magic actually happens. That’s not really the focus of the stories though, so I wasn’t that bothered by it. Just wanted to mention for folks who are thinking about picking it up.
- Michael Miele