The cover here is a really nice one, keeping the logos small and more or less out of the way, and presenting a beautiful, detailed image of Midori front and center.  It works great and really, really helps the book to stand out.  On the other hand, the back cover is more or less a plain blue background and a summary of the story.  There’s a small image of a character on the bottom that looks quite nice, but it’s too tiny and out of the way, and as such has little presence.  The artwork contained within luckily looks every bit as nice as the cover (though unfortunately look a tad confusing without the color, but they still look great.)  Unfortunately, unless you count the afterword by the author, no real extras are included.  

 

The text reads smoothly (outside of a handful of small typos) and really helps to draw you in, and the variety of fonts used really work well.  However, the text has one big issue, and that is accessibility.  The book uses a variety of terms related to both the internet as we know it and that of “The World.”  While they at least offer a short explanation for some of the franchise exclusive terms, they don’t really catch all of them and the amount thrown at you can be rather daunting if you aren’t familiar with the series.  All this could have been solved with translation notes or foot notes, but unfortunately neither are present here.

 

Midori is a “professional victim” in the online massively multiplayer RPG known as “The World,” which means that she challenges player killers to try to attack her for 60 seconds, and if they fail, she gets paid.  Also, her class is a “Blade Brandier,” but she refuses to draw her weapon.  (If you got all that, you’ll probably be fine.  If not, you may want to start elsewhere in the world of .hack)  While her and her close friend Adamas are engaging a player killer (or PK, as they are more commonly called,) they are soon confronted by the PK and leader of the massive Kestrel guild, Bordeaux, who slashes down Adamas and starts to stir up the crowd.  Before Midori is forced to draw her blade, a player killer killer (PKK) known as Haseo, the Terror of Death steps in and takes down the rabid PKs.  Haseo then tells Midori that he is looking for a mysterious PK named Tri-Edge, whom Midori believes she possesses knowledge of.  

 

From there we are thrown into a twisted tale as we are introduced to Midori Shinomura, who exists in the real world and has never played “The World,” who soon falls victim to a mysterious illness.  As her condition continues to deteriorate, the Midori of “The World” is thrown into a variety of strange circumstances that lead her to question her own past and, eventually, even her own existence.  By the end of the book, the characters start to intertwine ever so slightly, but things are left hanging in rather dire circumstances for both the Midori in the real world and the one in the virtual world.  

 

In Summary:

If you’re looking to get into the .hack universe, this certainly isn’t the place to start, as the multitude of terms related to both the internet and “The World” are massive and offer very little explanation, making for a rather difficult entry barrier here.  However, as a title in the .hack series, this is a solid entry, providing a number of twists and turns that are bound to keep you reading.  Trying to figure out exactly how the characters are tied together is interesting and actually gets a little confusing (what is the significance of Midori’s seemingly inconsistent eye color, for example) but never too much.  The story even finds time to make a bit of commentary on the positives and negatives involved in the steady creep of technology.  All in all, this novel is an interesting entry into the .hack universe, but seeing the disturbing note that we left the main characters on, hopefully the next novel will be able to tie things together in a satisfactory way.