Title: Death Note: Black Edition Volume III
Author: Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 416
Rating 4.5/5
After rating two installments in this series in a row a 4.5/5, I was kind of hoping for a 5* read with this one. Unfortunately, it went the other way, but that might just be because I’d read two of these back to back. It could also be because this is towards the middle of the series and so it could have the manga equivalent of middle book syndrome.
Still, it was an excellent read and I’m definitely enjoying the series, and I can’t wait to keep on reading and to finish off the second half. I’ll also be interested to see how the events at the end of this are resolved, as well as a few other story lines that have been ongoing. Death Note does that well – I’ve said before that it reminds me of Prison Break, in that each issue ends with some sort of cliff-hanger that keeps you going and that there are constant call backs to things that happened earlier.
It leaves you, as the reader, with the feeling that everything has been thought of beforehand. In the same way that the A Song of Ice and Fire books only work because stuff that was mentioned in one book is referred back to many books later, Death Note leaves you with that feeling of a master planner at work. It’s beautiful, like a painting or a tapestry.
What’s interesting about this part of the story is that the nature of it changes slightly. We still have the concept of Kira killing people by writing their names in a notebook, only it’s a different Kira and with a different motive. It almost becomes a tale of corporate crime, and while that might not be for everyone, I thought it worked pretty well and I enjoyed it.
All in all, so far the series has been so good that even if takes a dip in quality from here on out, it almost doesn’t matter. I’ll still recommend it no matter what, and I’d recommend this book no matter what too. Just make sure that you read them in order, because this isn’t the kind of series that you can dip in and out of as standalones. The good news is that you can get a pretty cool box set that brings them together.
