The World of NIGHTSCHOOL

The original run of Nightschool was from 2008-2010, but in anticipation for the release of a new book set in the same world, all four volumes were recently collected into two bigger volumes.

Nightschool is the creation of Svetlana Chmakova, who is one of my current favorite creators. She's the brilliant mind behind the Berrybrook world: Awkward, Brave, Crush and Diary. (An E book is slated for next year. Yay!)

You don't really see much of Berrybrook Chmakova in Nightschool. It reads more like a typical manga that could have been written by anyone. The characters are interesting, but there are a lot of them and sadly, the short run only just touches upon them, which is its largest failing.

The world of Nightschool shows how supernatural creatures, which are simply called "night things" (boring), get their education. There's a human school that transforms at night to become Nightschool. There are vampires, werewolves and other "shifters," demons, mermaids, and weirns, which are a distinct type of witch that has a demon bound to them from birth. These demons are called Astrals and you can see Alex's Astral in the upper right on the cover there. 

I have no idea how to pronounce "weirn," which drives me nuts. My German-focused mind says something like vie-ern. (Sort of like "iron" with a V in front.) But it's probably really something simple, like "weird" with an N.

The story in Nightschool is quite complex. Alex's older sister is the night guardian, who basically makes sure the school looks presentable before it becomes a human school again in the morning. Why they don't just have their own school is beyond me. Seems like it would be easier. But anyway, her sister goes missing to the point that no one knows who she is except for a handful of select people. Alex goes to school to investigate and the book is mostly about her trying to find her sister while all these other complex storylines weave around it. I don't want to give too much away, so I won't go into detail. I also don't want to try to write it all out because there's a lot!

Seems like a good place for a photo of the second collected volume.

Anyway, I'll touch briefly on some of the character groups.

Alex is the main character, a weirn girl. She's not very likeable, but she's written that way on purpose. She was cursed and if she shows affection towards anything, bad things happen to it. So she's very, very cold and distant.

Of the students, you mainly see one older clique of three (Ronee, Sion and Remy) plus Ronee's younger sister Rochelle, who is Alex's age. Ronee, Sion and Rochelle are all weirns. Remy is a demon. (I liked Remy a lot.) Rochelle is more bubbly and likeable, but she has to be. She's like a foil of Alex, who has to remain distant. Rochelle's thing is apparently a bloodline curse. If she becomes upset it causes actual physical pain to her older sister, Ronee. Weird. Ronee is one of the few people who remembers Alex's sister, so they work together in the second volume.

Then there are the Hunters, a group that protects humans from night things. You meet many of them, though three are sidelined at their first appearance, which annoyed me because the character with by far the coolest design is one of them. Their leader, Daemon, is extremely powerful and pretty awesome.

Mr. Roi is one of the Nightschool teachers and he's crazy powerful, too, as is the principal. These two characters and Daemon are all Night Lords or Nereshai.

There's a young seer character named Marina who's instrumental to the story. She's not a Hunter, but connected to them.

Nightschool was written more for an older audience. The characters are mostly older and the plotlines and actions are, too. I feel like the length is what caused the problems I have with this. There's a lot of world-building, but it leaves you with more questions than answers. There are a lot of characters that leave you wanting to understand them better. This needed to be a longer, more drawn out, way more in-depth series.

So Chmakova moved on to do the Berrybrook world and at some point, she must have thought "I can  combine these!" And so she did.

The Weirn Books is basically Berrybrook set in the Nightschool world. The characters are younger and more developed in one volume than the Nightschool cast throughout the entire run. Like Berrybrook, it's aimed at middle-grade readers.

The main cast are weirns. Ailis is on the right there, alongside her cousin Na'ya. They're kind of outcasts at school. Ailis is a bit awkward. Na'ya is obsessed with dragons and wants to be one. I have no idea how to pronounce Ailis, but her nickname is Leesh, so I'm thinking it's like Alicia without the "ia." Aleesh. With a short "a" or long "a" maybe. Ay-leesh. Hang on. Research time. Okay, it seems to be Irish, yet that's pronounced "Ay-lish" so the nickname for that would not be Leesh.

Seriously, authors, if you give your characters unusual names, put something in there about pronunciation. It's such a pet peeve of mine. It's easy to do a scene where another character is dragging out that name for some reason and that's a great place to stick in pronunciation. "Ayyyyy-leeeeeeeeshhhh."

Anyway. Other characters include the girls' grandmother, Na'ya's younger brother (D'esh), the werewolf boy Ailis has a crush on (Russ), the weird boy from next door named Jasper (he likes Na'ya), and the mean weirn girl at school (Patricia).

The plot is pretty simple. There's a spooky house in the woods and the girls learn it used to be a weirn school their grandmother and her twin brother attended. Grandma faked sick to stay home one day and that day turned out to be the one where all the kids and the teacher went missing. She never saw her brother after that. So shortly after learning this story, Patricia starts acting weird at school and the cousins are suspicious. Is this connected to what happened decades ago? Of course it is. But you'll have to read the book to find out how.

I absolutely loved this. Not on the level of Berrybrook, but it's not far behind. You don't need to read Nightschool to enjoy this new book at all. Nightschool is fun reading, so I do recommend it, even though I had issues with it, but it's definitely not necessary if you want to skip right to Weirn Books.

DIARY

You know, I just realized I never reviewed Crush here. I'm pretty shocked.

Svetlana Chmakova's Berrybrook Middle School series is one of my favorite things ever. Each one of these graphic novels is a precious work. I honestly cannot praise them enough. Just go read them.

Diary, unfortunately, is more of a companion book than another addition to the graphic novel series. It has a calendar, a giant chunk of pages to use as a sketchbook, and another giant chunk of lined pages to write in.

However, it also contains two very important stories and another that's more for fun.

The fun story is a space tale written and illustrated by Jensen. You can imagine how that goes. It falls in between the two actual comic format new stories.

SPOILER WARNING

The first new story focuses on Jaime and Peppi, the characters from Awkward. This time, the point of view is Jaime's, as the pair works on a time capsule and he worries about Peppi's crush on someone named Jesse. The kids in his Science Club turn his minor bafflement over this into full-blown worry that she's going to ditch him and he's going to lose his only friend or that he's going to become some horrible third wheel.

SERIOUSLY.


SPOILERS.





So it comes out that Jesse is actually just a celebrity crush. I loved the discussion with the theatre group, because Jesse has come out as nonbinary and one of the characters says they use those pronouns, too.

And then here comes this adorable girl named Mei who hands Jaime what appears to be a love note and then Peppi comes over. This has SO GOT TO BE CONTINUED.

The third new story is a comic about Maribella, another character we last saw in Awkward before she moved away. She's having a hard time adjusting to her new, too tiny small town, where the kids are just flat out rude twats. Almost all of them are terrible bullies. She gets invited to a slumber party, which she's excited about, until the blonde bitch hosting it informs her that she's a charity invite, along with another girl, who looks angry and ends up leaving early. The bitchy clique watches scary movies and tell stories, which end up bothering Maribella so much that she vomits.

Naturally, this leads to a new nickname and further bullying once they're all back in class. Maribella stands up to them, saying this isn't right and that everyone has embarrassing moments. She calls out everyone on their bullying, but it falls on deaf ears until the coolest Chmakova character I've seen aside from Felipe steps in. He calmly sits in his seat and points out embarrassing things three other classmates have done, which shames them into shutting up. Maribella steps in and stops him from embarrassing anyone else. It is kind of frustrating, because the bullies weren't made into better people. They were basically shut up because someone else bullied them into doing so. So none of these new people is really a good character...yet. But this new boy (I think it's a boy anyway) and his spiky-haired friend named Hedgehog (Hedge) seem like they have real potential. I'd love to see another story set in this new town. But the most frustrating thing is that the new guy doesn't even get a name! He reminds me of Felipe a bit. Headphones around the neck. Cool hair with a floop in the face, although his actually covers half his face and Felipe's is less so. I want to know who this is! I even asked Svetlana on Facebook. Heh.

If you're a Berrybrook fan like me, Diary is a must have.

BRAVE

Awkward, the first book about these middle school characters, released almost two years ago, and I have been eagerly anticipating this second installment.

It does not disappoint. Well, much, anyway.

Brave follows Jensen, who thinks of his life at school as a video game with multiple enemies to hopefully escape the notice of. Only when he's pulled into a project done by the newspaper staff does he slowly...very slowly...come to realize he's being bullied, even by those he thinks of as his friends.

He also comes to the sad realization that he really has no friends.

He tries to fit in with the art club, but they all get involved in a project that one obnoxious girl leaves him out of, so he helps the newspaper club, but doesn't realize they're mostly just using him for busy work. He reads a couple popular books because the authors are visiting the school arts festival, but ends up missing the festival due to illness. He tries his best to fit in, although I admit that his minor failings sometimes frustrate me. The newspaper club asks him to read a small document before they interview him for their project and he just never does it, even though he knows he should. I'm a bit anal, like Jenny the newspaper girl but less batshit, so I found this trait of his putting off his work to be annoying. And he keeps daydreaming and drawing in his math class, even though he's not doing well and the teacher is intimidating.

Jensen though is mostly a likeable character. He's just got some minor moments when he's frustrating.

I think the only real downfall of this story is that it lacks the backstory of Awkward. There are no scenes outside the school. You don't learn about Jensen's home life or Jenny's or either of the two bullies who plague Jensen. Awkward went more into depth that way and the story was deeper for it.

It does end on a nice cliffhanger, so I hope to see how that went in the next volume...and there'd better be a next volume!

AWKWARD

This is BRILLIANT. It was in my comic pull today and I devoured it. I might even reread it again later today. The art is adorable, the characters are great, and it's a ton of fun.

I don't want to give too much away, because I really encourage everyone to read this and I want you all to discover the story as it unfolds, but there's a lot of school fun here, learning about friendships, finding your own voice, combating bullies, and ART CLUB VS. SCIENCE CLUB IT IS ON.

Just go buy it. You won't be disappointed.