A Bride’s Story vol. 10

Much of the focus of this volume’s first half is on Karluk as he goes off to live with Amir’s brother Azel and his friends on the plains for a while.  Why’s he doing this? Well, any twelve-year-old boy with a twenty-year-old wife is bound to feel some insecurity about his masculinity. Now he’s learning the ropes of how to be a decent hunter with a bow and his own hawk.  This is all interesting in the way much of the series’ depiction of late-19th-century life around the Silk Road has been with mangaka Kaoru Mori’s art contributing detail that’s both intricate and subtle in regards to both the drawing and characterization.  Karluk makes for a good point-of-view character in this section as we get to see his struggles with this new lifestyle firsthand and get some more insight into the current life situation of Azel and his friends. Amir shows up too, both to liven things up and remind us that the dynamic between her and Karluk isn’t going to change anytime soon.  No matter how much the latter may want it to.

The volume’s second half is a bit more interesting since it sets up an interesting new status quo for one of its regular characters.  That would be Mr. Smith, the English anthropologist who has occasionally been the focus of this series but has spent the majority of it hanging out on its fringes along with his indispensably savvy guide Ali.  Here, the two of them find themselves part of a caravan heading to Ankara amidst bad weather and the specter of nearby Russian forces. Along the way we learn a thing or two about how vengeance is handled in these parts and how to deal with boredom while waiting for the weather to clear.  Camel shearing is involved in that last bit. It’s all interesting in the same way the first half of this volume was, but Smith’s exploits get an added kick when a character we haven’t seen in a VERY long time (like, not since vol. 3) shows up in the last chapter. This character’s reappearance promises some happy complications for the man, so it’ll be interesting to see how they’re addressed in the next volume.