What Yaoi Press says about the title: When three ruthless fire demons come to terrorize the monk Hakuin's village he's forced to seek help from Fuyu, the snow demon who tormented him a year ago. Fuyu is thrilled to see his beautiful monk again. He'll defeat the demons only if Hakuin becomes his willing slave. Fuyu realizes too late that the fire demons are out of his league. Even worse, the lead demon thinks the fey Fuyu would make a nice slave in his own right. When Fuyu is put in the same position he put Hakuin a year ago he starts to realize the error of his ways. Maybe, in time, he can even be redeemed to his beloved monk. Also, a pacifist is forced to bring an assassin to a rival lord. It doesn't help that the assassin is part of the group who wiped out the pacifist's race. So why are they sleeping together? Kimi's thoughts: This volume was a nice surprise. Hakuin is a troubled young monk. He is haunted by the trauma of having been "fed" to a snow demon by another village after they tricked him into coming to their village to render aid. Usually demons kill their prey after playing with it in all sorts of manner, including sexual violation, and they do so by breaking the spirit of their prey and once full despair has been reached, drinking the soul. Hakuin is not quite sure why he was let go, but he knows one thing: he is most definitely tainted. His fellow monks have another theory. They believe that Hakuin somehow made a personal connection with the demon, and that is why it let him go. When fire demons attack his village, he finds he must face his fears and go seek help from the very being that scarred his soul. What follows is a tale of personal redemption. Hakuin struggles to regain his sense of self worth, while the demon Fuyu faces the horrible things he has done, having been given a sense of conscience through his contact with Hakuin. Indeed, he loves Hakuin, and using this as leverage, Hakuin begins a journey of self discovery and atonement with Fuyu. Fuyu's empathy is further deepened by ironically suffering in much the same way as he made Hakuin suffer, which allows the two to make a sort of rapprochement. Rather than a story of rape=love, we get a multi-layered gem of a tale about how one comes to see that rape=pain and that if you love someone, you treat them kindly, gently, and with great affection. The second story is a little one shot that starts out well, but ends on a tragic note. I actually quite liked it up until that point as the tragedy that unfolds is one that could have been neatly sidestepped. I really don't like it when a gratuitous death appears in a love story. I do appreciate that the way it occurs is meant to have deep repercussions for the other character, but to be quite honest, this one shot is not long enough to pull this off. Still, it is not a bad read overall, though I have to add that due to brevity the character development is a little stunted as well. The art was nice to look at, and followed fairly typical shoujo/yaoi conventions, but was not as delicate or refined as native manga. This is not an issue, however, as it is well done despite the artist's lack of variety in tone work. Actually, that is understating it a bit...shading is used, but no real texture or patterning is used, giving the art a spare, lean look despite the lack of sharp angles. The stances seem a bit stiff as well, seeming posed, so panels echo a very western comic feel of jumping about the scene, rather than the flowing feel to most Japanese manga. This IS Western manga, however. Yaoi Press is a publisher based in Nevada, USA, and the mangaka who is the author, Yamila Abraham is the founder and president of the imprint. Studio Kosaru is the non de plume for an Indonesian artist who often works with Yaoi Press. Together they have made a nice piece of yaoi that is very East meets West, with an original tale that is well worth a good read.