Growing up without her parents is hard for Marin, especially in 7th grade where having the right clothes and family count for a lot if you want to be popular. However, living with her adopted grandparents and a host of other informal family members is a blast for Marin, who loves the freedom of her unconventional household. If things weren’t so difficult at school, life with Granny, Gramps, and her best friend Moe would be perfect.
Marin is forced to forget her social troubles however, when a mysterious earthquake rocks the countryside around a local shrine, leaving a strange mirror-image world hanging upside-down in the sky. All over the globe bits of this other world, called Brigadoon, are falling to the Earth, wrecking havoc with buildings and cities. Governments from the United States to Japan are scrambling to solve the mystery of Brigadoon’s existence, searching frantically for clues in Marin’s neighborhood and school. Someone from Brigadoon however, seems to have taken a special interest in Marin, as she discovers when a huge, blue, robotic man named Melan appears in the back yard of Granny’s house pledging to protect Marin from her enemies forever. This is a mixed blessing at best– on the one hand Melan is chivalrous and kind, on the other hand Marin is now constantly under attack by the Monomakia of Brigadoon, a creepy fleet of mechanical beings who seem determined to kill or kidnap Marin.
With government agents chasing them from one direction, angry classmates from another, and Monomakia falling from the sky, Marin will need all the help Granny, Moe, and Melan can give her just to stay in one piece. This two-volume story ends on a maddening cliffhanger at the end of book one, so be prepared with Volume 2 nearby!
Brigadoon, Volume 1
by Nozomi Watase
ISBN: 1591823773
Tokyopop, 2003
