A friend at work recommend I go in blind to this. Actually, the topic of favorites came up and he mentioned I should definitely read this one. To which he then refused to speak anymore about it. Same thing really.
I was going to give it 10 chapters before I bowed out. Then this happened.
I love it. The faces in the trees. How the artist draws motion. The face.
At this point in the story we know a few things. One of them is Jagasaki likes to put on a fake smile. Second is that these assholes frogs invade peoples bodies. Sinking into them, the skin seemingly liquid, infecting them and turning them in Fractured Humans. You’ll see hints of what it looks like if you look at Jagasaki’s right arm. Because, surprise! Our hero is also a Fractured Human. It’s a highlander situation. There can only be one. He isn’t alone tho. He’s got a companion. An Owl that shits out dungballs that Jagasaki crushes and snorts so that his arm can revert to human form. If he goes to long without one of those dungballs he succumbs to the frog inside himself and becomes fully taken over by the parasitic frog.
It’s great because right off the bat we establish a protagonist that is struggling to find his humanity. Figuratively. Then you add a physical representation of his separation from the rest of humanity. Tell us the reader he’ll die if he doest eat those balls. Then show us the only way to get those balls, and boom conflict and goals for a character. By the end of chapter 7 all of these things are established.
I’m def glad I listened to Diego.
End of CHAPTER 7: THE FUTURE HE LONGED FOR