As a new threat arises from outside the walls of the City, the warring Truants
and Educators must join forces or be destroyed. The fate of the City is
determined at last in this long-awaited conclusion to the Truancy trilogy.
The concluding book of the Truancy trilogy! Now first of all I just want to
mention that I am writing this review with dual thoughts. First off all, I am
finally able to finish a series in a long long time. But on a second thought,
finishing a series always leaves me with this empty feeling of never to be able
to return in the set world. Earlier this year I started with the Truancy series
with the first book written in Isamu Fukui’s earlier years. The first book was
a great start of the series and the second book was a prequel to the first
(Truancy Origins) showing a great feat of combining and explaining the pasts of
several the characters that you met up with in the first book BUT also allowing
you to place several pieces of the puzzle to fill in the blanks, and on top of
it all there were still some eluding concepts that couldn’t be related towards
the first book. These parts really had my hopes up for the concluding book
Truancy City.
As for Truancy City. The universe that was set in the first two books of the
series revolves around two opposing forces, the Educators and the Truants. The
Mayor is leading the City where there is a strict regime in education which is
tightly enforced by the Educators, however as you learn soon enough already in
the first book is that some students do not fully agree with these tight rules.
It is by these students that the Truants are formed and they fight it out
against the Educators. This fight however has been going for some time now
already. Truancy (the first book in the series) left a somewhat rounded story
in the ending and as for Truancy Origins this book showed the background of how
everything got started in the first place, so looking at these two I did not
have a clue of what was in store for me in the final book of the series, only
what I could make up from the synopsis on the back. Well… what can I say, “As a
new threat arises and joining of the forces”, I was pretty eager to find this
out.
I must say that Truancy City throws away almost everything of what I had
thought would happen based on the relations set in the earlier books as well as
all the events that transpired and caused grief in the protagonists. Isamu
Fukui does start off the book in the trend that I was used to but then he goes
in a completely different direction. Revealing the new threat that arose and is
compromising both the Truants and the Educators. What he did in Truancy City is
totally unexpected.
Truancy City plays more part into the events of which the first book was
left in the end. Once again you have the Truants who are still fighting against
the Educators with full force and not hesitating to reach their goals. As I
mentioned in my earlier reviews some of the scenes are quite brutal and since
this is still a young-adult series I must say that it should really be for an
teen audience of 14-15 and up. Again in Truancy City there are a few scenes where
Takan (Tack), the main protagonist of the first book, does something without a
moments notice and that actually left me with wow… okay. That on the side I do
think that the message of this book is clear with one statement, fighting the
oppression that is set by the Mayor, fighting for your own right and decide
what you want to do.
The story in Truancy City now focuses, in my opinion, more on a different
character besides the one that were introduces earlier, like Umasi and Zen and
Tack. Now it is more up to Cross to take a lead, he also has a past with the
Educators and is a bit caught in between the Truants and Educators and also
does not really know what to do in the beginning. I really liked the focus on
his character, especially with several flashbacks to things that happened in
his past and which made him the person he is today.
Just like Cross’s character, looking at Truancy City and on the whole all
the characters are a big plus, they become more and more relatable. In each
book you get to know different individual characters: Umasi, Zen, Noni, Edward,
Cross, Floe, The Mayor, Rothenberg, Tack, the albino. These are just to name a
few. Just by the first book alone you have a certain image of each one but with
the prequel and especially in the concluding book there is whole picture
appearing of each individual character. Isamu Fukui has created over these
three books a very nice set of characters, of which some by certain events that
happened will be missed.
The Truancy series is action-packed, exciting and with the last book,
unexpected from start to finish. The whole Truancy series really holds a
promise, the plotting already started in the first book and was greatly kept up
as the story progressed, in the end there is really a nice curve ball that keeps
you tense in reading this book until the final page. What Isamu Fukui managed
at young age with creating the idea of the Truants and Educators is only
further built up in the other two books that follow it up. Truancy is a great
series for teen boys, all the action and I think the Oriental inspiration
behind the book will appeal to many. The series has a great build up in the
story itself and I must stress to read it in the order (I did it with the
prequel in the middle), it will be much more satisfying!