Book Review: Aria the Scarlet Ammo Volume 2

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Man, it sure has been a while, huh? Usually, I am good about covering all the books I purchase within a decent timeframe, but unfortunately distractions, such as important matters and other things, prevented me from doing so.

Fortunately, I have not forgotten about this place and got around to finishing the last of the two books I got back in June.

Today, I will be reviewing that title, which is called Aria the Scarlet Ammo Volume 2 by Chugaku Akamatsu.

As I have gave a partial series synopsis in an earlier post, I will not go over it again, because much of what has already been said will be repeated.

With the butei killing incident resolved, everyone is preparing for an event that is meant to improve people’s opinion of the butei profession.

However, all is not well when it is discovered that a being that has been known to kidnap certain kinds of people is targeting one of the students at the school.

Now, being dragged into yet a case another by Aria, because she recognized the entity’s name, Kinji must find a person that many think does not really exist.

I am not too about this one. However, before I can get into the things I did not particularly, I guess I should discuss the things that I did like. First, the problem of unnatural profanity that was prevalent in the previous volume was not to be found. In my review of that volume, I noted that the things being said by the culprit just did not make sense because it sounded more like a bomb was found than a threat. However, here there were not any instances like that to be seen. It looks like the people working on this series have improved a bit. While nothing is perfect, I like to see people improve upon their skills, instead of just letting them be. I also liked how we learned a bit more about Shirayuki, Kinji’s childhood friend. When she was introduced in the last volume, she just seemed to be some annoying girl, but here I kind of feel sympathetic as to why she wants to be around Kinji so much, though probably not as to the fact that she still does keep intruding upon Kinji. I also liked the few funny parts that did make me laugh, though the funniest were probably in the beginning portions of the book. The thing that I think I liked the most though was the action. Once the action started, I did not really want to stop reading, though I had to because I had things to deal with. Then again, considering that I am a guy, I guess action scenes are somewhat enjoyable, though good stories are preferable. Outside of that, I cannot think of anything else that I did like because the issues I had were pretty bad. The fact that there was some improvement and the action scenes made not want to put this book down made the book somewhat decent.

Although there were things that I liked about the book, there are some issues. Fortunately, only two things really bugged me. First, while things were easy enough to follow, the pacing early on in the book seemed to be rather slow. Yes, the audience should be able to get to know the characters of a story before they end up experiencing problems, but that does not mean that the book has any right to feel like it is dragging on. The only time that things really picked up was when things started happening, which was in the antepenultimate chapter, seeing as the book does have an epilogue. Really? This is not what a good book should be like. I want my attention grabbed and held early on, not be made to wait until things do get interesting. This, however, is reminding me of my disgust with The Book Thief, which also had problems in pacing. The thing that bugged me the most though was that issues from previous volume were still present. Now, I do not expect people to fix all of their mistakes made in the previous work, since nothing man made can ever be perfect, but I do expect some improvement. Like the last volume, there were numerous instances where the wrong word was used or missing. These kinds of mistakes really ruin the flow of stories, because the reader has to go back and mentally fixed those mistakes by reading them as they should have been. This is not something that readers really like to do. I will admit that I am guilty of these kinds of mistakes too in my own writing, but being the second volume and having paid for this eBook, somebody should have been proofreading things, but it seems like nobody is doing that. This alone is making me want to drop Aria, because whoever is assigned by DMG to deal with the novels is doing a terrible job. Other than those things, nothing else seemed to really bug me. While there were only two things that I dislike about this book, they were bad enjoy to make me dislike the book overall.

Despite the fact that some things did improve, the bad outweighed them enough to make this a waste of time. I recommend that everyone avoid this book at all cost, unless you are a fan of the Aria, because those people may be the only ones that would enjoy this.

What are your thoughts on Aria the Scarlet Ammo Volume 2? Were you as disappointed as I was or did you like it? Was there something that you liked or hated that I forgot to mention? Feel free to comment.

Copyright © 2014 Bryce Campbell. All Rights Reserved.