Recap Summary
St. Kleio Academy is an exclusive boarding school that caters to a select group of students: the clones of famous historical figures. With the lockdown of the school and heightened security measures in the aftermath of clone Kennedy's assassination, tensions are at an all time high.
Click here for my initial review of Vol. 1
First Impressions
Volume 2 picks up as the residents of St. Kleio Academy are preparing for the annual expo; a perennial fundraiser hosted by the school in which the clones are shown off to wealthy business interests and political leaders alike as proof of progress for their financial investment.
Although everyone is busy preparing their routines and perfecting the minutiae of their outfits, the shock of Mozart's drastic act has yet to wear off, and the clones are left on edge.
All of the familiar faces are back, and three otherwise minor characters (Rasputin, Himiko and Joan of Arc) are fleshed out significantly more than in the previous volume. Making his introduction to the series is eccentric board director Rockswell, a helicopter diving buffoon who totes along a small child with a candy obsession that he adopted on a whim and named Pandora (I told you that he was eccentric).
The concept of predestination is examined in this volume through Rasputin, who has devised a plan to twart what many feel is their inescapable destiny to repeat the history of their originals. Mock death rituals have been established in order to present a faithful reenactment of each clone's original cause of death, in hopes of breaking the chains of fate and allowing everyone to live beyond the years of their namesake.
What I found to be most appealing about this volume was the changing impressions of Dolly--the small figurine sheep that many of the clones carry around. Dolly has come to be seen in a number of different lights:
1. Dolly showers upon its followers its "divine mercy"
2. Dolly is a good luck charm meant to ward off physical or mental impairment
3. Dolly is a curse and those who worship it put themselves in serious danger
4. Dolly will help land the clone a spouse. Elizabeth I is particularly invested in not living up to her namesake
All the while the staff of the academy are divided about whether or not such trinkets should be allowed in the school, and what sort of message it might be sending to the students.
Ultimately this volume was a lot lighter in tone than the first for the majority of the text. The last ten pages or so, however, completely reverses this impression and sets the third volume up for what will likely be countless pages of heavy material.
The artwork remains competently drawn, and is sometimes outright beautiful.
Final Thoughts
If you're fine with being lulled into a false sense of security and are comfortable knowing that this series is likely to take a plunge into much darker material, read on. Enjoy the lighter days while they're still available to be enjoyed--after all, Afterschool Charisma excels in creating this foreboding sense of something dark and twisted being just around the corner. If there's anything that I've learned about the series so far, it's that there always is.
All subsequent volumes will be reviewed.
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