A Bride’s Story

Kaoru Mori loves history---you don’t create a comic about the silk road in the 19th century on a whim. The bride of the title is Amir, a young woman who has just married a boy seven years her junior as part of an arranged marriage. Even for the time and place it’s a big age gap, but the young couple try their best to make a go of it. The fact that the two get along is a refreshing change, but at the same time it saps a lot of conflict from the story. Then again, the manga is less about the plot and more about showing day-to-day life in the desert, and it does that beautifully. Mori’s art is gorgeous, especially when it comes to the exotic clothes and locale. The best parts of the book are the wordless sequences where the visuals alone tell the story.