Review by Frank Plowright

Yan Tieh Hua is an assassin who looks far younger than she actually is considering she was fifteen when she confessed to a crime she didn’t commit and served a long jail sentence. Why she still looks so young isn’t known, nor why she confessed, nor why she’s taken to livestreaming killings. She’s not the only person with uncanny abilities as Yan Vol. 1 also introduced Miku Higa, who has the ability to see five minutes into the future. This isn’t constant, changing according to circumstances, and she’s able to guide Yan. Very soon into this volume a masked teleporter is introduced, and as seen on the sample art, Yan’s not well disposed to them.

Anyone who read Chang Sheng’s first volume is going to need no encouraging to pick this up. It’s fast-paced and unpredictable action, and one mystery is solved early as it’s revealed why Yan was able to escape from a secure facility. That’s connected with the introduction of parallel worlds and moving in space and time.

An already impressively conceptual series is raised still further with every new introduction, which is far more than revealed via this review, and in addition to the possibilities there’s also the mystery of an over-arching organisation. Add in the phenomenally assured action art and this is already one hell of a series. Pulling it all together is a retired police detective with something to prove. His status permits avenues of investigation the police department are unable to pursue.

Yan is an SF and superhero mash-up where it’s possible to see some of the ideas Sheng has been inspired by, yet rather than being a repository for reheated old plots he takes the ideas in new directions. An example is the new technologies introduced, then given such well conceived limitations.

By the volume’s end Sheng has taken everyone on a completely unpredictable and thoroughly entertaining ride and created a seemingly impossible situation to rectify. You’ll be back for Yan Vol. 3.