the second volume of TRESE is, in my opinion, leagues better than the first volume.
TRESE: UNREPORTED MURDERS is the third book of my filipino horror pile, as recommended by fantaghiro23 and kwesifriends. and while i’m not going to rave about the book, i have to admit that it is, so far, the best of the three i’ve already read.
with UNREPORTED MURDERS, we continue to follow lead character alexandra trese as she navigates the underworld of metro manila to solve police cases that involve the supernatural. we still don’t get answers as to who she really is, why the police really depends on her, and why many supernatural beings bow to her “rules.” but, unlike in the first volume wherein these questions nagged at me, i was able to let them go for this volume.
mainly because second volumes rarely do set-up, and this one does. and because unlike the first volume, we get a real taste of horror in the issues contained in this second volume.
in here, we get two stories without a clear-cut ending, and one that is obviously a lead-in to a story about to come. in case #5, the first story of the second volume, we end where we begin: with a nuno (a dwarf-like creature) falling in love; and in case #7, we end with the knowledge that alexandra trese cannot clean up all the supernatural messes of the city. sure, the first volume also had a case that sought a balance between perceived reality and the underworld. but unlike the stories of volume 2, the stories of volume 1 had a more lesson-to-take-home approach to the endings of the story.
volume 2 also had lessons (after all, moral lessons are almost always the point of filipino folklore), but not as black-and-white as the ones found in the first volume. and unlike the stories from the first volume, the ones included in UNREPORTED MURDERS have a more frightening approach to horror. it actually reminds me of the old horror comics i used to read when i was a kid.
now, onto the third (and last, as of now) volume of TRESE.
I’m giving away a Chuck Palahniuk novel by next week. perhaps you might be interested to join.
http://melikesart.blogspot.com/2010/11/birthday-giveaway-sali-na.html
cool! I’m joining (and I’ll pimp here as well
)
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i think this is the volume with the storm god? i found that story very disturbing. it was after i read it that Ondoy happened.
yep, this is the one with the storm god. i liked the promise of the story, but my favorite has to be the ones with the tiyanaks
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