Fairy Tail is your typical beat ‘em up shounen adventure yarn, filled with sinister villains, really bad puns, and an engaging trio of heroes. That said, I enjoyed the first two books in the series, but as I’ve stated before, I am a sucker for these kinds of stories. I find the somewhat simple formula of the good guys overcoming all obstacles to defeat the bad guys comforting, and wonder why it only seems to happens in books. Honest, hard-working people finishing first should be the rule rather than the exception, but that’s not the case in real life. *Sniff* I like the way it works out in manga better.

Celestial wizard Lucy had always had one dream–join the legendary Fairy Tail wizard’s guild and finally become a legitimate wizard. But her path to glory has been less than brilliant, as she lands herself smack in the middle of a rather dicey situation while pursuing her latest lead. Enter Natsu, the strange kid with explosive fire magic who bails her out–and apparently, hails from Fairy Tail!

Thumbing through the pages of Fairy Tail, a new manga series by Hiro Mashima, I prepared myself to loathe or at least barely tolerate its contents, as it seemed like just about every shonen manga cliche that’s come down the pike in the past few years — from a fantasy-based setting to a spiky hair protagonist to an abundance of cleavage — was crammed in for maximum sales potential. So the good news then is it’s actually a quite charming series, full of good fun and humor. It’s also an excellent example of how a good author can make even the most tired premise seem fresh and inventive.

Volume seven of Fairy Tail is a lot of fun. The battle between Fairy Tail and Phantom Lord continues on, and not only are some nifty villains introduced on the Phantom Lord side, we also learn more about some members of Fairy Tail who’ve remained in the background thus far. True, a couple of the chapters could be summarized as “Mirajane and Elfman have angst,” but it’s about time some of these folks got some attention.