Written by Yukako Kanbei
Yen Press, 240 pp.
Rating: Unrated

I want to like Kieli. I really, truly do.

The characters are solid, for sure. Kieli is a misfit in her school who cannot seem to connect with any living people, while Harvey is an animated corpse and one of the last remnants of the war. Both of them suffer from the apathy and loneliness that pervade their lives. In addition, there are so many great ideas being kicked around at all times. There’s a strange church that employs people for dead body disposal, Kieli’s unwillingness to believe in the church’s God, and a wrecked world trying to carry on as if it isn’t falling apart. The chapter titles are wonderfully intriguing, examples being “Why Isn’t God Here?” and “The Dead Sleep in the Wilderness.”

If this was a manga, I would be sold. It is, however, a book. And the writing…well, the writing is horrendous. I kicked around so many other polite ways of saying it. I typed “the actual writing fails to deliver” and “the translation keeps the story from ever taking off.” The sad truth, though, is that the wording—the absolute crux on which any novel is built—is unforgivable. I want to say that it might not be the translator’s fault. The source material could be just as patchy, but I will never know.

There are so many sentences that make a resounding clunk in my head when I read them. Let’s start with this one: “She naturally became more talkative than usual as she tried to keep up with the man’s athletic pace.” This is completely contradictory. Kieli is a girl who keeps to herself. How can she “naturally” do something that completely defies her usual behavior?

Another of my favorite clunkers: “With her wide-collared black bolero jacket and her black skirt, her all-black figure melted like a shadow into the darkness, but that only served to emphasize how out of place a girl like her was in a place like this at this time of night.” After describing the black color of her individual garments, the author decided it would be wise to remind us that Kieli’s figure is “all-black.” Ugh. And then the sentence rambles on for another 25 words before it finally dies. Read the whole thing out loud to yourself and tell me it doesn’t sound awful.

While this may seem like nit-picking, the truth is that the writing consistently pulled me out of the novel, at least once per page. There was no flow, no natural rhythm to it, no way to get lost in the actual story.

The best parts of the story, for me, were the ones when Kieli would experience the horrible deaths of the ghosts who still linger in her world. Because she is so in tune with the spirit world, these events unfold seamlessly, adding a very surreal feel to the entire read, as readers can never be sure if what Kieli is experiencing is real or not. Even when it becomes easier to recognize when she is caught in a ghost vision, it never seems as if she is completely safe.

Eventually, the writing turns around, just in time for the really important events. The chapter “The Dead Sleep in the Wilderness” starts off a series of developments that finally pulls all of the characters into a headlong sprint towards a resolution while leaving plenty of potential for the second volume of the series.

With an entire planet to explore, the church’s inner workings still shrouded in mystery, and ever-growing characters, Kieli could go in any number of directions. It is a shame that the first volume gets off to such a rocky start.

Volume one of Kieli is available now.