Review: Audition

Audition
By Kye Young Chon
Rated 16+ for Older Teens
DramaQueen, $11.99

When DramaQueen publisher Tran Nguyen gave me this book at MangaNEXT, she was very enthusiastic about Chon’s art, so I was looking forward to something fresh and different. My heart sank when I saw the premise of the story: In order to gain her inheritance, a woman has to find four young men, assemble them into a band, and win a challenging audition. Not only has it been done before, but you know how the story is going to end before it begins.

Fortunately, I kept reading, and I soon realized my initial dismay was premature. Yes, the story treads familiar ground, but Chon is a good storyteller with a light touch. The main character is Buok Pak, a young woman fresh out of school who has just opened her own detective agency. In a standard twist, her first client is her ex-best friend, current worst enemy, Myung-ja Song. Myung-ja’s father, a record mogul, has died, and she can’t inherit his fortune unless she finds four young men, whom her father saw once, and brings them together into a band that can win a special audition. Buok balks at the task and only relents when Myung-ja agrees to become her assistant. The two girls find the four boys with preposterous ease, but each of the future band members is caught up in his own life, and it’s not a given that any of them will actually attend the audition (except, of course, that there would be no book if they didn’t).

Chon’s style is very fashion-oriented, with stretched-out figures, detailed clothing, and lots and lots of hair, often arranged in a complicated manner even for minor characters. She switches to a quieter look, with softer figures and moody landscapes, for the flashbacks in which Mr. Song meets each of the boys, and these scenes are the best in the book.

DramaQueen takes pride in their high production quality, and they certainly have come through here. My one complaint would be the artist’s choice to use so many earth tones on the cover, which makes it look muddy. The book has a full dust jacket, well printed on glossy stock. Inside, eight color plates with pictures and descriptions of the four musicians give us a taste of the story to come. The paper has a pleasant creamy color and the print quality is nice and sharp. Chon uses a lot of varied tones that would have gotten lost with lesser-quality paper and printing. Extras include a pronunciation guide and translation notes, although there seems to be a line missing from the latter.

I know DramaQueen is excited about diversifying from yaoi to shoujo for older teens. Audition is a good start, with a story that promises to be complex and interesting, and good production values to keep the older readers happy.

This review is based on a complimentary copy supplied by the publisher.