No outsider has set foot on the island of Manhattan for the past three years, and with good reason. It's become a place of wild, dark magic, where technology and the laws of science do not work. The dark kingdom of Manhattan is at war with the United States, seeking to spread across the river to the rest of the world. Its armies of trolls, goblins, imps, ghouls and harpies are under the command of a dark Everett Winterthorn, the Midnight King. Isaac Silverberg is Winterthorn's former apprentice, plucked from Death Row and given a final chance to redeem himself. The US Army makes him an offer he can't his life, in exchange for rescuing the daughter of the governor of New Jersey. She's been kidnapped by Winterthorn's minions and taken into the depths of the Magic Kingdom. It's a mission that can only be accomplished by a mage powerful enough to face down Winterthorn. Unfortunately for Isaac Silverberg, the government believes that he is that man. In fact, they are quite sure of it. Isaac himself isn't so sure...
I'm surprised I haven't reviewed this yet. It's been on my shelf for some time.
The premise is (supposedly) simple. Manhattan has become a world full of magic, with dragons, demons, satyrs and all kind of fantastic creatures roaming its streets. It's ruled by a powerful wizard. A local politician frees the wizard's apprentice from prison and manages to get him to go inside Manhattan to rescue the politician's beautiful daughter.
But really, nothing is this series is as it seems.
The apprentice, Isaac, is sweet. I really felt for his despair and for his idealism. His betrayal and his innocence were heartbreaking.
The villain of the story, Everett, is fascinating, and his end really surprised me. I did not see it coming.
Hope is one of those characters that should have been a token love interest, but manages to rise above it, with her own story, her own beliefs, and her own actions. Though every now and then she gets a case of the stupids, I like how it's obviously because her own hatred and misguided beliefs get in the way. There are hints of romance between her and Isaac and I thought their relationship was really sweet. They're one of my favorite couples, in fact.
I also like the depth given to the minions. I even got upset when a few of my favorites died.
The twists are pretty good in this one. I've heard some people call the plot average, but I thought the creators did an excellent job of keeping the story moving, and in a logical-without-getting-boring direction.
One thing to be said about the plot, and it might be considered a spoiler, so I'm hiding it.
I found the ending powerful, and inspiring, though bittersweet. It's not the typical, feel-good, all-is-right-with-the-world ending, though there's a strong bit of comfort in it. The ending is a challenge to look at ourselves in the mirror and the demons that live there.
(Obviously, there are things I didn't enjoy, but I'm getting tired of listing them when I review something. Just know that the book isn't perfect, but it's still very much worth the read. I highly recommend it.)
After posting my original review of this, it turned out to be by an old friend of mine who I had lost touch with. So yay to books bringing us back together
Don’t let the title put you off (yeah silly riffs of it takes a thief to catch a thief do nothing for me), while it takes a wizard to catch a wizard is the theme, it does it well.
Three years ago Isaac Silverberg, former apprentice to Everett Winterthorn, helped to kill 200,000 people in NYC turning Manhattan into a magical wasteland where trolls, goblins and other horrific things exist and Winterthorn has set himself up as the Midnight King. Isaac is only days away from being put to death for this when they haul the boy out of isolation. He’s given a task, go in and rescue the daughter of an important man who is being held on the island of Manhattan. In return, the man will force the military to release the videotape proving Isaac was a mere dupe in all of this and the real killer is Winterthorn.
Inside the magical bubble, almost no humans are left alive. Even the less dangerous faeries creatures are in danger of being eaten. In this wasteland, Hope lives with her little friendly imp, Lars. Hope has been trained by a Catholic priest after the incident to fight (how he knew, who knows). She would put Buffy to shame. Naturally she and Isaac cross paths and she does manage to keep from killing him. However, he’s about the only one she doesn’t kill and that becomes a sticking point for them. You quickly get the idea that Isaac is a gentle young man with all this amazing power locked up in him.
Without giving anything away, let’s just say this has more layers than an onion and no one is what they really seem. It must be a good 500 pages long (even though there’s a table of contents with page number, none exist in the manga…) My one complaint is that occasionally you feel like a scene or two ended up on the cutting room floor but overall the story is engaging. You don’t get to know Isaac and Hope quite as well as I’d have liked but the art is lovely
This felt rushed and lacking something, as if it was an adaptation or something, but I can't find any reference to a source material. The art was ok, but nothing amazing. I didn't get enough of any of the characters besides Hope to feel like I understood their backstory or motivation. By 30% in to the book I was debating dropping it altogether cause I was pretty bored. The speech bubbles are broken up so much it's irritating. There are times that each bubble has a single word, and not for emphasis, so the dialogue felt strangely stilted even though I was reading it instead of hearing it. The story had some potential, but the execution was so poor due to pacing and style issues that it wasn't worth the time.
It was an interesting story with good pictures (although looking at grotesque creatures one after another did get a bit old), but I pretty much knew what was going to happen from the beginning and was a bit disappointed with the way it got there. It took far too many pages for a final battle that mostly consisted of the wizards telling each other off... Also, I'm a bit confused how the girl survived and managed to avoid capture when pretty much everyone else, including guys much more capable of fighting than her, ended up either dead or captured. It was good, but it relied on too many cliches without enough originality to make up for it.
This is a manga produced directly for the US market by a German writer and a Singaporean Chinese artist, currently free on Kindle. Interesting how the manga genre is becoming so international.
That aside, is this story any good? No. The plot is utterly confused with several poorly edited overlapping narratives, none of which make much sense. These threads have no beginnings or ends, no development, no content as such. No story in truth. The endlessly wordy final confrontation is over with a few platitudes, flipped like a pancake from defeat to victory. I don’t think this story even qualifies as Christian fiction as it fails to make belief in God the lynchpin of events, even though belief is rammed down the reader’s throat on almost every page. There’s a lot of upskirting for this to be Christian fiction too, but hey, that’s a manga trope it seems.
The art shows promise with a lot of visual imagination, especially for the monsters, but tries to convey so much hyperkinetic action that it just ends up being unclear, merely frantic. The artist loves wild camera angles. The visual narration is just a lot of noise, most of which is utterly redundant.
Shame. The premise was intriguing if not in itself original (just how many times has Manhattan been transformed into hell by now?), but the execution was poor. Forgettable.
Going into this manga I wasn't really sure what to expect. I'd never heard of it before but it was free on Google Play, so I decided to give it a read. I was surprised to find out that the manga was an Armageddon themed manga that also revolved around the use of magic, as the name suggests. It also utilizes light Christian religious themes as well.
The majority of the story to this manga revolves around a young manga named Isaac Silverburg, who happens to be the person that unleashed demons upon the city of Manhattan. The city is now inhabited by demons and Silverburg is forced to enter the city in an attempt to rescue a governor's daughter at any cost.
As the story progresses a woman named Hope appears to aid him in his quest. Hope happens to be one of the few free human survivors currently in the city, and she hunts down most demons she comes across. She also aids in Isaac's final stand near the end of the manga as well.
Overall, I found this manga to be pretty awesome, and I loved the artwork throughout. The change in art style while Isaac was caught in the darkness was really cool too. If you're a fan of Armageddon and/or demon themed stories then I gladly recommend It Takes A Wizard, it's pretty entertaining.
Escape from New York, but also Berserk-styled modern dark fantasy? The lead, Isaac Silverberg, gets rescued from his execution for turning Manhattan into a magic dark fantasy dystopia and conscripted into rescuing an officials daughter from the current city filled with fantasy monsters. The region has the "places with magic make technology not work" trope that almost never makes sense to me, so Isaac--a wizard--must rescue the girl from the Midnight King, his former business partner who betrayed him.
The art's decent enough, but the story spends a lot of time foreshadowing and teasing at info that's right in the store page summary of the book like it's supposed to be a surprise. It was alright, but there wasn't much about it I found to make it particularly stand out.
Honestly I read this manga in anticipation of the next scene with adorable spam-snatching imp Lars. He was the best part about the chapters! The rest of the story was a typical good vs. evil drama. Very serious except of course for cutie Lars. Definitely PG-13 or above, as the killing scenes are graphic and literal heads roll.
Lavish black and white illustrations. Reads Japanese style. A wizard returns to a Manhattan that has been transformed. The story echoes Escape from New York? Not suitable for under 17years old.
This was quite the moving story. I didn't realize how long this manga was when I started reading. Even though it is black and white it was well worth reading. I always enjoy good fantasy. Give it a read.
The island of Manhattan has been lost to an all consuming dark magic transforming the landscape into a hellish place filled with monsters from the darkest depths of the realms of a magical world. Within its confines few can stand against the ever stronger darkness that interrupts technology as easily as any law of science the creatures within the zone carelessly ignore. Now that the governor of New Jersey's daughter has been taken into the chaotic world the government only has one hope left to save her in Isaac Silverberg who was on death row for his part in the transformation of the island originally. Will he be able to redeem himself and will he be able to face off against the man that he once apprenticed under? It takes a wizard to find out as we throw expectation out of the window in the sorta Demon City Shinjuku type of story.
Now one thing I noticed after re-reading the story nearly a decade later (way to many books to read and never enough time) is that this story isn't just about magic and monsters but has a biblical theme to it throughout the book. Here let me throw out this little bit of spoiler
All in all, the story is basically a rescue mission/redemption tale where the bad guys might not be pure evil and the good guys must bring balance to the magic that has corrupted the landscape. Typical fairy tale stuff in general and perhaps a little rushed or confusing when one scenes of the story suddenly jumps somewhere else but I really enjoyed the over the top characterizations when we see what side each person really is on at last. :)
Monsters and magic have overrun Manhattan and no one has entered it for three years. That is until wizard Isaac Silverberg is brought in by military like personnel to take care of the Midnight king Isaac's rival and former mentor.
That's the plot in a nutshell, I have to say this is a solid effort by an American to create a Japanese style manga. Thomas Hart event went so far to have the booked printed backwards in true Japanese fashion.
The plot flows at a great pace and we kind of get back story on the characters, to be honest I always felt like I was missing a key point, like there was a book before this. With this type of story telling you as the reader are forced to fill in the blanks with whatever you come up with and this can be helpful or damaging by how you look at it. I feel it actually helps the story especially since most of the characters are very one dimensional.
My biggest gripe is there is great build up to the final battle and while it does not disappointing it seems very rushed and out of no where, again like there is a previous part that I missed (I actually checked to make sure there were not any other volumes).
Overall I would label this as a very solid effort and recommend this to manga and anime fans, possibly to people who are interested in getting into said manga and anime. It did not feel like a waste of time but I can't say I am richer for the experience, I do not regret purchasing this on a whim.
I wish I could tell you how long I've had this book on my nightside table, waiting for me to read it. Oops. However, I'd like to say, it was worth the wait.
Isaac is a young man incarcerated for a horrible event, that he says he had nothing to do with. Ernest, his mentor, is the one who created the chaos that is presently Manhattan Island. Demons of all shapes and sizes now inhabit the island, and what humans are still on the island are food or fuel. But there's a young woman there, and her father wants her back. Isaac is the only one who can get her, and he's sent to Manhattan to get her out.
On his quest, he encounters a young woman, Hope, who has been trained in sword fighting and stealth. She has a little friend, Lars, a sprite or a baby demon, and they both decide to help Isaac infiltrate the demons' high holy grounds, on the night that a special ritual is supposed to take place.
This book is published manga-style, and reads from right to left. The art style for this graphic novel is very pretty, but at first, I thought Hope was a younger version of Isaac (at least until I realized she had breasts). The storyline is very easy to follow, and there are a few twists that I didn't expect.
The Island of Manhattan is a magical wasteland. The government holds the line around the “Magic Kingdom,” shooting down dragons and other monsters that get too close to the mainland. It’s a dangerous situation worsened when the daughter of New Jersey’s governor goes missing.
Fearing that she’s been abducted by Winterthorn, ruler of Manhattan, the governor authorizes an audacious rescue attempt – pulling Winterthorn’s apprentice off Death Row and sending him into the twisted Manhattan he helped create. For Isaac Silverberg, it’s a way to get his life back while atoning for a mistake which claimed the lives of 200,000 people. But Silverberg realizes he’s on a suicide mission.
It Takes a Wizard is an OEM written by Thomas R. Hart and illustrated by Sean Lam. If I had to be critical, I’d probably say that I liked the setting more than the characters. Silverberg stays standoffish throughout the book, but Hope (a human girl who lives in an abandoned church) and her Spam-obsessed imp gives the reader someone to latch on to. And I loved the endless parade of monsters (from traditional goblins to more innovative combinations of teeth and scales)!
This is my first taste of Manga. I am a very versatile reader and I like to try different genres once in a while. The fact that one must read from right to left in these Japanese comics was not too difficult to master. The thing that got me was the overload of illustrations. I know that comics are essentially pictures, but after having read pictureless books for years, the adjustment was difficult. I can only read these in short bursts. As for this piece itself, I found the story to be average, but a little cheesy. It was strangely religious in nature and the idea behind it all was odd. Mythical creatures coming to life and putting Manhattan under siege was not a very enticing storyline for me. While not the best representation from the world of manga, this rather large novel was readable.
I enjoyed the story and the premise, but I also think it fell just short of how good it was built up to be. Solid story elements were there, all the pieces were, but they were not necessarily in the most optimum order to the story. So that, when I got to the climax, I was a little confused about how the characters actually arrived to their personal conclusions/resolutions. Isaac and Hope were central, but I felt that their personalities and relationship to each other had some holes in it. While not inherently a bad thing, if those holes had been filled in, I think the entire story could have a much fuller feeling.
The storyline was not overly original and at times seemed quite choppy. A young mage is tricked by his mentor and a bubble world of evil exists in N.Y.. The mage enters the evil land and encounters a young girl who fights the righteous fight.
The three stars is primarily for the artwork. Artwork is a bit busy for my taste but the artist does a very good job drawing at a variety of angles to keep a fresh look throughout the book.
Interesting manga and I LOVED the fact that it was one fat book instead of trying to track down several volumes. The story was tight and fight scenes were good. I didn't see the twist at the end coming however I totally enjoyed it.
Loved the artwork and the story line. Both main characters had an interesting, is somewhat predictable background and I rather liked the ending as well. It was a quick read and I was glad to read all of the story at once rather than have to wait volume by volume like other stories.
I really liked this books, but it did have a major flaw... I mean, the plot was great but it was all over the place. At times I was lost, wondering what had happened. Overall an enjoyable quick read