Chronin, Vol. 1:The Knife at Your Back by Alison Wilgus

​   This book had fairly underwhelming reviews, so it took me a while to check it out, but actually it turned out to be quite good.
    A time travelling adventure with samurais…that sounds good, doesn’t it. The story follows a young Japanese woman from 2045 who finds herself stuck in the feudal Japan of 1864 and ends up having to navigate the turbulent politics of the time.
    It’s interesting, exciting…and book one of the duology, which now makes this a waiting game…wait and see if the ever inconsistent library will deem it necessary to get book two.  I’m surprised they got this book at all, it has no movie tie ins. Maybe it’s because it’s manga adjacent.
   The book took the author something like a decade to properly realize, which seems like a lot, but muses be fickle. And while the novel aspect of it is perfectly good, the art does leave something to be desired. It essentially looks like line drawings. Maybe I’ve been reading too many properly colored comics, but this just had a sort of unfinished look to me, the before look. Before the colorist comes in. the sort of drawings usually featured in the supplemental materials of the book done in color. It’s fine the way it is, in black and white, but it leaves you longing for color, something the bright, positively neon cover promises, deceptively.
    But all in all, this was fun. I’d definitely read book two if it ever becomes available. Love the title too, such a clever mash up of chronos and ronin.