Youth Book Review : Le Livre des sorcières, by Ébishi Maki

By Corinne Deschamps

This book is a manga, and is a series of 3 volumes available in French.  A manga is a book that looks like a comic book, but it has special characters which are known as Japanese anime. The book is also to be read from right to left so you start the book at the end. At least that’s how people describe it!  This manga is by far the best I have ever read yet. The context was just so interesting.

 The book talks about a young doctor who desperately searches for knowledge that no one had ever considered to comprehend. The boy has a certain love for the medical art and tries to save his patients no matter what, but the patients he is more interested in saving are witches. As his master had once told him, witches are to be considered as sick people. They inhabit a certain sickness called ‘’Melancholy’ which causes them to sell their soul to the devil, as they all say.

The boy, Jean, is convinced that with medical attention, they can be saved, and he manages to prove to the people that he is right. Not only did people accuse him of witchcraft, but they believed he was the cause of all the witch problems. At a very young age, the main character once had a friend who was accused of witchcraft and he had said the wrong thing – to try and support the fact that she was not a witch – and she was then killed right in front of his eyes. Still to this day, the main character feels guilty and holds a grudge against himself. He believes that saving innocent people accused of witchcraft will probably help his past be forgiven and he can live life normally again. 

The book only has 3 volumes, but they were truly worth reading. The books were wonderful; I would have liked another few in the collection!  This book might have been boring for some people, but I truly believe this book was special in its own way. The way the author took the time to really explain his point of view was amazing. I believe the author’s view is that there is a cure to everything, no matter the problem or evil. The author also mentioned that at a young age he was really into history, psychology, and psychometry, and he incorporated most of that in the story, which I find interesting myself.

 The book had so many hooks and cliffhangers it was hard not to want to read the book as fast as possible to know how the story ended. One way the author used cliffhangers is he would switch from different timelines in the main character's life to another. For example, the time period would change from when the protagonist was a young adult to when he was a little kid.

This is one of the reasons I say it is special in its own way. The other reason would be the art style. The art style was different from normal manga art, and if you ask me, it was better than the normal one. The body features such as the hands and faces had more details. Now, in other Mangas I’ve read, the hair on the character had unrealistic colors or even shape, but this manga, all the characters had realistic colors, shapes and had cool details.

Overall, this book was exceptional, and I appreciated reading it.