Very cute.

This book arrived in my life on a wave of serendipity: I was listening to the Reading Glasses podcast as I checked in books at my library job, and just as Mallory mentioned this title, I reached into the bookdrop and found a copy sitting right there. Seemed appropriate for a book about magic.

Mooncakes is a cinnamon roll of a book, featuring a wholesome queer romance between Nova, a young witch, and her childhood friend Tam, a nonbinary werewolf who has recently returned to town after moving away. With help from Nova's lesbian grandmas, some spirits, and one of Nova's friends, they confront the dark forces lurking in the local forest and uncover a plot that involves Tam's past.

Lately I've had trouble focusing on reading, and I really needed a quick, uplifting, and queer book like this one. Great not only for exhausted thirtysomething urban fantasy fans like myself, but also for tweens and teens, and for anyone who loved Molly Ostertag's graphic novel The Witch Boy.

Not exactly my aesthetic cup of tea—which made sense when I saw a couple of the influences named in the acknowledgements—but I did like some of the more concrete pieces, and the title poem is spellbinding. Recommended for readers who enjoy poetry that experiments with language and deals in abstractions more than I do.

This book confounded me, as every time I tried to think through how anything about the “science” or societal structure would work, things fell apart. It requires more relaxing into the weirdness and not questioning things too much than I found easy to do; but when I did manage to relax, I found the concepts Porter is working with interesting. Though I resist the reading of this as a straightforward utopia. Loss of free will is too sinister to me, even if what’s being forced upon you is what’s best for you, even if you end up liking it.

Also, you can tell that a queer woman wrote this book, because it mentions hands more than 80 times over the course of 200 pages and has hands all over the cover.

The second and, apparently, final volume of the series. Again, this is cute and features beautiful art. I especially like how Caly draws clothing; the characters are chic dressers, and their outfits look so soft and pretty. I wish there were more of this series, because the characters are fun, their relationships have enough friction to be interesting, and the situations introduced in these first two installments have the potential to change in exciting ways. I like slice-of-life series, so I would have read more. But alas. As is, Breath of Flowers was an enjoyable, if brief, interlude.

A serendipitous read: After spending some time researching yuri titles at my library job, I found Breath of Flowers on a cart of books to be shelved. In 2021 I've both resolved to read more queer books and unexpectedly rekindled my interest in manga, so of course I checked it out.

The first volume introduces Azami, a high school student who is certain that she is attracted only to boys... Until her crush, Gwyn, turns out to be a girl. Because their high school has no girls' basketball team, Gwyn has been posing as a boy in order to pursue her athletic interests.

This obstacle is overcome rather quickly, and Azami readily adjusts to the revelation. Pretty soon the narrative shifts to high school relationship drama, as a competitor for Gwyn's affections emerges. I found this swift transition a bit jarring; I get that this is a lighthearted title, but realizing that your sexual orientation is not what you thought it was--especially when you're adamant that you know yourself already, like Azami is--then it takes time to come to terms with it. Seems like there should have been more angst!

I also found the cross dressing story line odd. I mean, I'm not going to side-eye an outlandish situation in a manga too hard. However, I kept thinking that it would all make much more sense and build a story with greater depth if Gwyn were written as a trans boy. In some scenes, that seems to be what's happening: Gwyn lives socially as a boy, binds, and appears to experience dysphoria related to puberty. Chalking all of that up solely to wanting to keep up her ruse and play basketball didn't quite add up for me.

Overall, though, Breath of Flowers presents a sweet, gentle romance, and I found that reading about two young women falling in love and figuring out how to treat one another was reassuring, despite the fact that my high school days are far behind me. I'll see how the plot thickens in Volume 2.

(Also of interest, at least to me: Caly is a French mangaka, which led me to reading through the creator biographies on Tokyopop's International Women of Manga page and realizing that I'm really uninformed regarding manga that is being created outside of Japan.)

I adore the art and character design, and this really is a gorgeous series aesthetically speaking. And I like the concept. But every volume contained something that felt off to me, enough that I don’t see myself continuing.