▪	RELEASED BY:		DIGITAL MANGA PUBLISHING
		▪	AUTHOR / ART:		YOU SHIIZAKI
		▪	FORMAT:		WESTERN / B&W
		▪	PAGES:		250
		▪	RATING:		M
		▪	RELEASE DATE:		07/08/2008
		▪	REVIEW DATE:		06/18/2008
		▪	REVIEWED BY:		HOLLY ELLINGWOOD

Itsuki is a shy and gentle young man, beautiful and quiet; at heart he is painter with great promise but comes from a poor family with severe hardships. When he meets a sculpture named Tokiwa, their friendship is one that changes him forever and the blossoming romantic love between them even more so. However, tragic circumstances force the two apart in the cruelest way imaginable. Itsuki must choose to save his family and in doing so agrees to become the living doll of a powerful and rich man who now controls every facet of his life. The cost is not only his freedom but his love for Tokiwa whom he is prevented from contacting again for the next several years.

But fate has a way of not being denied and circumstances see the bitter sculptor and the oppressed ex-painter together again. Stuck at a beautiful home in the middle of a snow storm, the next ten days will be a trial for both men as they battle their desires and the long buried pain from their parting all those years ago.

It is an absorbing romantic tale that shows much more thought and depth than the average yaoi light novel. The stand alone novel displays a complexity in the story and its characters that is immediately captivating. The journey of these two men is a layered one filled with ambivalence and dichotomies. Itsuki is gentle and passive, cold on the outside and unfeeling seeming yet inside overly sensitive and his heart shattered by all that transpires. Tokiwa is a man torn by his hurt and anger over Itsuki leaving him and becoming another man’s lover, and his own inner love that still holds sway over his heart. It leaves to love making between the two men that is filled with pleasure and pain, joy and despair. That is because even while consummating their feelings for each other, they also affirm the worst of the painful feelings inside of them. Itsuki believes he has merely found a new cage with a man who sees him also as only a “doll”, while Tokiwa’s franticness to find the Itsuki he loves drives him to acts that are abusive and desperate. Even the villain in this story, if he can be considered such, is one that in the end is shown with two sides – one that is unyielding and controlling, the other that shows a measure of kindness and love that is far less sinister than believed. Altogether it makes an immensely moving tale about love, loss and forgiveness as well as healing. I highly recommend it to any lover of romance that has its emotional challenges both for the characters and the reader as they contend with the contrariness of the situation and the people within the emotionally complex tale.

The illustrations that accentuate the novel are absolutely lovely. There is a romantic full color page done with an atmospheric muted copper over wash. And the illustration at the beginning of the story in black and white of Tokiwa’s outside grounds is so detailed and evocative enough that you can hear the wind rustling in the trees.

IN SUMMARY:
Gentle Cage is an emotionally in depth journey about love, possession, and freedom.