I have recently finished reading Vampire Hunter D : The Stuff of Dreams, the fifth in a series of (so far) eight english books, of a total of seveteen in japanese.
And everytime I decide to read one of those, I have to kick myself in the butt to do so. Why? Shouldn'reading about the half-human, half-vampire (or dhampir) son of Dracula that has a talking left hand and that battles monsters on the Frontier be the best thing ever? In theory, yes. In practice, not so much.
I have read five Vampire Hunter D novels. And not one single time have I understood the resolution of the story. Not ONE single time. In five books. I am ready to acknowledge that I might be stupid, but after more than 1000 pages, I really don't think it's my fault anymore. At least not entirely.
Each and everytime, I understand everything until the last 20 or so pages, where D does things that have no sense whatsoever, and leaves on his cyborg horse (Come on! Cyborg Horse! CYBORG!). And everytime I hope that it's going to be clear, that I'm going to understand, this time. Uh uh. Not this time, bro. And not the one after that either.
The real question here is: is it the author's fault or the translator's fault? Who knows? I don't speak japanese , so I have no way of knowing. Either one of them, or heck, maybe even both, get fed up within the last 20 pages and start rambling about ethereal essences and dark fates, and then I close the book with puzzled eyes and vow never to read one again.
Except I still have two more to read. And I can assure you that one of these days I'm gonna say to myself : "But what if THIS one is actually comprehensible?". And then you'll see another article like this one.
Bottom line, don't buy these books. Unless you have a very high functoning, MODOK-like brain. Then please buy them and e-mail me. Pretty please.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment