Hiroyuki Morioka

Overall
As this is a translated novel, some issues may not be present in the original.

I have 2 huge gripes with the book: unnecessary terminology and poorly executed exposition dumps.

There is so much random celtic-esque words that serve no purpose. It's like jargon for the sake of jargon. They will get dropped, given a pronunciation and translations, and then most likely ignored for the rest of the book. A few words will get kept, but those are usually things that are unique to the universe.

Example of the bad: sairhinec (SERREEN, military uniform). Just say military uniform. I don't think this word ever appears again.
Example of the good: frocragh (FROHKRAHZH, spatiosensory perception). It's a 6th sense possessed by Abh that allow them to meld their awareness with a starship. That is something that needs a name and would have an in-universe term. It is also used several times throughout the book.

There is a lot of the first. It's not great.

Exposition dumps are something that are always hard to handle. Everyman characters are supposed to help with that, but Jinto doesn't help with many of those aspects. The Abh culture info dumps work relatively well since that is what Jinto doesn't know, but all the other stuff was not well handled.

I do like how our main characters are part of the expansionist, monarchical empire. It's a nice variation.

Recommendation
This is the first of 3 novels and they all form one continuous story, so it is hard to say at this point. As much as I complained, I did enjoy the book.

Brief Summary
Jinto's planet is conquered by the Abh. His father, the president of the planet, turns over the defenses to the Abh in exchange for getting a noble title and becoming the Abh governor of the system.

Many years later, he is going to the Imperial capital for schooling in a military academy. Part of Abh nobility duty is military service. He is escorted to the ship he will taking by a young Abh woman, Lafier. They chat en route and start becoming friends.

The ship runs into an enemy fleet, Lafier and Jinto are sent by small craft to warn the star system the fleet is en route to, while the warship engages the fleet. When the stop for refueling, the local Abh noble attempts to delay them so the enemy fleet does not notice his little fief. Novel ends there.

Thoughts

The story is pretty simple. Once you get over the terminology nonsense, it is relatively well told. Expo dump is always a hurdle so I don't hold it against the book too much. It is always nice to have a simple story. The author did a good job of KISS in the plot, and really should have kept to KISS when it came to the jargon.

I really like how alien and apart the Abh are. It provides a goods reason for the Abh arrogance, but also why the Landers (normal humans) dislike them. Putting Jinto between the two groups as a Lander, but legally an Abh noble, is a good idea.

Jinto definitely should have been a more general everyman instead of just an Abh culture everyman. The expo dump when Lafier explains Abh reproduction and family structure works better than the expo dumps for FTL and the FNA.

The baron who appears later in the book makes a very good antagonist. He's a bad guy, but his actions would make a lot of sense even without that factor. They are very cowardly and self-centered actions, especially with his motivations, but there is a very real and rational fear driving those actions.

Also the beginning of his downfall also follows very logically from the choices he made in setting up his little fief.

Once Jinto and Lafier dock at the baron's space station, my big gripes really fade. There is less jargon getting introduced. There's less awkward expo dumps.

Characters
Jinto is not the most interesting character. He is struggling to fit in, but that is a common struggle of youth. His position as the everyman doesn't help that. Ultimately, his character is there be link between the audience and the world.

Lafier is very much the space elf that she is: bold, arrogant, and self-assured. She is very capable to back those up. It does highlight how the Abh can be quite grating to Landers. Her confusion at normal human things does provide a contrast to Jinto's confusion of Abh.

The remaining characters that we get a real feel for a the baron, Seelnay, and the former baron. I already covered the baron a bit. The fact that Seelney is very subservient makes her work in the role of both for and against our protagonists. The former baron has a great bit where he kind of contradicts himself in a very human way and it is great.… (meer)

This is hte part of the story that really cranks out the whole tsundere princess needs a man to teach her the ways of the world and she needs to "be a woman" and wear a dress and garbage that really kills any kind of seriousness that the character has. Morioka talks about how Lafiel came to him as a muse and what we get is a stereotype of a person than an actual person.
I will say however that Lafiel is smart and is ready to shoot people when she needs to so it's not totally ruined by her always being in distress and needing Jinto to save her. Jinto of course treats her as if she is always going to be falling into distress and it's rather painful to watch.

We also get to know the Abh origin story that the anime doesn't quite relate clearly (if at all?) and we also have a dump truck load of Baronh to learn as well... joy. Mixed in with TokyoPop's need to take the easy way out, well, I hope you memoried all that.… (meer)

Crest of the Stars 1: Princess of the Empire If you've seen the anime, then this only fills in some tiny gaps with regard to history and some other things the characters were thinking of.Overall the story is good. I don't quite like how we need a male vessel to tour the story with, but Lafiel is strong in her own right and Jinto just looks like an ass.Honestly I don't see how this is really "Space Opera" as it really only focuses on a small group of people, and to me a Space Opera, like a Soap Opera, focuses on groups of people.This book only covers up to about the middle of the Lyuf Klowal part, around episode 6~7.The only thing I find majorly wrong with this book is the use of Baronh all the time. It's like that one image:Only the TL note is brief and then you have to glossary hop.… (meer)

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot.wordpress.leafmarks.com by express permission of this reviewer Title: Banner of the Stars: The Shape of Bonds Series: Seikai Trilogy Author & Artist: Hiroyuki Morioka, Toshihiro Ono Rating: 4 of 5 Stars Genre: Manga Pages: 200 Synopsis: 3 years after Crest of the Stars, Lafiel has command of her first ship and Jinto is the Abh equivalent of First Mate. The United Mankind is still kicking so the War Machines of both nations gear up and things start to heat up. It is testing time for Lafiel and Jinto, to see if the years of training have paid off. My Thoughts: I enjoyed this volume a little bit more than the previous book, but I suspect that is because it was shorter and didn't have as much ground to cover as the first volume. I think there was more Abh talk/terms than in the previous one, but since they were referring to military ranks, ships, missiles, etc, it really didn't matter to me because something is either a person, a ship, a missile or a laser to me. I wouldn't recommend this except to die hard fans because so much that makes Banner of the Stars an exceptionable anime is cut out here to make things fit. I don't regret buying this,not at all and I did enjoy it, but it is more for Completeness's sake than anything else. From a librarian standpoint, it was interesting to discover that there are two 'potential' covers. This one you see and then another with Admiral Spoor naked on the cover. I suspect though that the cover of Spoor was something put out by Tokyopop before the actual release and it never made it to paper. One little stone in the avalanche that brought them down. And just for completist's sake, here's the alternate cover, that I can't find verification of on paper, only digitally. You can see why Tokyopop might not have released this, as this series was aimed at teens [and their parents who did the actual buying]. This picture IS the front page of the volume I have, but in black and white. And that folks, is what is called gratuitous fan-service.

"… (meer)