Of Swords and Parasols

Too Long is a collection of ten short stories by Hee Jung Park, the manhwaga of Hotel Africa. Being a manhwa short story collection, all the stories are about love and loss. I admit, if I’d picked this up out of curiosity instead of because I liked something else by the creator, I probably wouldn’t have read past the first story. Primarily because it has pretty art, but an almost incomprehensible story.

Thankfully, it picked up after that. Some of the stories were iffy, others pretty good, ranging from brief glimpses into moments of people’s lives to far reaching stories. Several of the stories were intertwined, though the time periods weren’t consecutive, but overlapped. Those were fun, and I wouldn’t have minded more stories about the characters. My favorite story, though, was Gwangrim is Awesome, which manages to have a cute romance, a non-pretentious message about how being “normal” is ok, and a girl able to figure out her fake!friend (but why must those be so prominent in shoujo…) is using her, and worry about clearing things up with her other friend before worrying about the guy.

Pretty interesting overall, but good for me mostly to see what seems to be the thematic precursor to Hotel Africa, though none of the stories manage to be as engaging as the Hotel Africa stories.