You may remember that I read The Gate of Sorrows and reread Brave Story recently and absolutely loved it. Well, a friend happened to own a copy of The Book of Heroes, the prequel to The Gate of Sorrows, and she lent it to me so I could decide if I was getting both books or just the one. Well, it’s a good thing she lent it to me because my experience with The Book of Heroes was a mixed bag.

The Book of Heroes is the story of Yuriko (aka U-ri), who undertakes a quest to save her brother after he stabs two of his classmates who were bullying him and later disappears. His disappearance is no normal matter – Yuriko’s brother is under the spell of the King in Yellow and if she doesn’t save him, he could tip the balance and bring disaster to the world.

What I really liked about The Book of Heroes was the worldbuilding involved. Perhaps because this is the first book, The Book of Heroes really goes deep into the idea of story and how “sin” is getting lost in a story. It reminds me a lot of the Buddhist concept of Nirvana, which is associated with the idea of nothing-ness (apologies if I got things wrong!). It was a novel concept and I really like it when we use a different base for worldbuilding.

Another thing I really liked was the exploration of the concept of “hero”. [POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD, SKIP TO THE END IF YOU WANT TO AVOID] Yuriko’s brother stabbed the two boys because they were bullying him and another girl under the approval of a teacher – this is all covered up in the aftermath by the teacher who wanted to protect himself. But in the case of the book, Yuriko’s brother has committed the crime in getting lost in the story of the Hero, which is a story that could be used for good or evil.

Sadly, this novel concept, coupled with the length of the book, was also its undoing. The book spends a lot of time explaining the world and setting up the premise, and then the second half of the book shifts to an imaginary world. It’s similar to how Brave Story was written, but the thing is, Brave Story gave the second half of the tale enough room for the protagonist to grow. In the Book of Heroes, it felt as though things were unnecessarily rushed – I would have preferred the book to be longer or if we just focused on this world and the region where stories come from and cut out the second world.

Another thing that I wasn’t too fond of was how harsh some of the characters were on Yuriko. It’s pretty clearly established that she’s eleven at the start of the book (and at the end), and while I don’t expect everything handed to her, it felt like people, namely the Man of Ash, kept too many things from her. Honestly, at some points of the book, it felt like the Man of Ash, who is her ally, was more antagonistic than the King in Yellow (who was actually pretty absent – there was one confrontation and then she’s just learning about the world).

If I have to compare the three fantasy books by Miyuki Miyabe that I’ve read, I would definitely choose Brave Story for a more traditional Bildungsroman and The Gate of Sorrows for mystery-fantasy hybrid. The Book of Heroes seems to try to integrate elements of both books (see: the issue of bullying in this book and the serial murders in The Gate of Sorrows, and the concept of fictional worlds in this book and Brave Story), but ultimately, it doesn’t execute the concepts as well as the other two. Perhaps I’ll change my mind if I reread the book in the future, but for now, I definitely prefer the other two books to this.