Kenji Kamiyama

"When Kokone sleeps she dreams of Heartland, a place full of technology and warring machines, where she's the Princess Ancien who possesses magical powers. But when events in her dreams and real life start to intersect, Kokone has to run from bad guys in both worlds. Will her dreams provide a way out, or get her into deeper trouble...?"--Back page.

the story of the unknown me

Napping princess

altlovesbooks

Ultimately I didn't really like this first volume. The story seems to be about Kokone, a girl whose father seems wrapped up in some unsavory/illegal/unfortunate business involving a tablet, which also seems wrapped up in her mom's death several years ago. Kokone herself lives an alternate life in a dreamworld, Heartland, which seems to mirror the events of the real world, but with a fantasy, steampunk-y twist. Magic in Heartland seems banned, but the princess of the realm, Ancien, can use it. Magic seems to consist of...computer programming? It's done on a tablet-like device, and makes robots move on their own, rather than requiring a small army of people to manually move. Ancien seems to come with baggage, a curse that disaster will befall Heartland because Ancien uses magic.

That's as far as I can grasp. The story itself seems confusing, but I do see the obvious parallels between the real world events and the dreamworld events. I also can't figure out if Kokone is actually physically a part of Heartland, or if it's all just an elaborate daydream construct. Things happen, but there's several places where no dialogue is given and you're instead meant to infer what's happening from the images on the panels. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

I'm not sure I'll continue with this series. It's an interesting idea (and I do love naps), but ultimately it wasn't compelling enough (or coherent enough) for me to really devote more time to it.

Napping princess the story of the unknown me

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