3 out of 5

I didn’t care for the anime take on Baccano!, but having loved Durarara!! and spotting the shared references between the two, I was interested to see what the text version of Ryohgo Narita’s ‘shared universe’ of fiction was like, and whether or not the issues I had with the visual take were possibly due to adaptation woes.

…And in part, yes.  The Rolling Bootlegs, Narita’s (I believe) first book and first volume of the series, takes a different, and more logical framing story versus the anime, and since it’s not stuck with having to compress several volumes of story into one, all-happening-at-once timeline, the author’s now established method of jumping between characters and pasts and presents is actually a lot more linear and followable in the book.  It’s lack of a clear point of view – even in multi-character books, there’s generally an endgame you can see yourself pointing toward  – and Narita’s frequent tendency to point out show strange and quirky everything is, make it imperfect and, unfortunately, easy to put down.  But it’s also very easy to read, and it’s on the verge of being hilarious at points – more on that below – with its history-meets-the-supernatural setup definitely curious enough to make you want to see where it might be going.

The Rolling Bootlegs take place over a stretch of a couple of nights in New York, and between several members of various crime families.  The Prohibition era setting is romanticized in the ‘rollicking’ vein, with lots of scuffles and tommy guns and wiseguys, but Narita really doesn’t offer us a sense of time or place; it could be any time, the guys just happen to wear suits and drive old timey cars and there are speakeasys.  A flashback offers the detail of a discovery a group of alchemists made, which is still clearly having an affect on these two nights, in the form of some sought-after liquor which makes the rounds – by accident, by coincidence – of the hands of several people from each family.  Bloody battles ensue.  There are a couple of wildcards who keep things amusing and off-kilter, whether that’s the servant, Ennis, who blindly seems to follow the lead of her master, the elder Szilard, or the thieving duo of Isaac and Miria, who steal things like chocolate and doors for obscure and wild reasons.  To the latter, the banter between these two has such potential, and comes right to the edge of hilarity, but Ryohgo will almost always undercut the moment by having the narrator comment on how strange the couple is.  Yeah, thanks.

There are a few touches like that that read like a young author, which this was, after all.  This is also my first light novel, so there are a couple of strange affectations that might be normal for this genre (excessive punctuation; adding the emotion with which someone has said something after they’ve said it, which is odd timing to me) and / or are due to the translation, but Yen Press’ work on this (and the hardcover printing) is otherwise really solid.

Because it’s such a quick read, at a little over 200 pages with large text and occasional illustrations, there’s definitely enough meat here to merit checking out subsequent volumes, especially since what prevented it from really working seemed like things that might sharpen up as the author’s skills did.  More importantly, if you’re traveling here from the anime, even if you were more of a fan of it than I was, I think the way Rolling Bootlegs straighten out some of the timeline helps to enrich the characters and storyline significantly.