Tomes are HORRIBLE weapons for melee. The only means of attack they have are for smacking enemies, that's it, and that attack is horrible, don't try it. Also, don't use them to parry, that is also a bad idea. Most pure mages raise Acrobatics, not Melee. 

Absolutely horrible. People who use Tomes are pure mages. Wands actually do have melee capabilities (and there are Spells out there for that), but they aren't as powerful as tomes for magic boosting nor do they reduce Spell MP cost (well... most don't anyway, who knows, there could be one out there that does). 

Tomes also don't have a Weapon Skill (which is what Mushi's weapon skill for his wand is). The thing that makes them great is that they power up magic ALOT and reduce its MP cost by a good bit, and the Tome Expertise Skill only serves to add more spell strengthening and more MP reduction.

So the only downside to Tomes is that they don't have weapon skills like Wands do and they have no melee capabilities. Also you can only use them with a certain type of magic, the more specific the magic that a Tome can use, the more powerful the boosts are. (Like, it'd be one thing if a Tome was just a water magic tome. If it was a tome that supported only Healing spells, it would be a bit more powerful since that is just one type of spell rather than a whole spectrum of magic)

What makes them better than wands, aside from giving better boosts, is that Wands and Rings can't use Advanced Magic. They can only utilize Basic Magic. (and Cantrips, but again, Cantrips are just basic intro sucky spells. Basic is where you get the real magic, and to get basic you need Knowledge Rank 10. 

Ill get more into that later. I kinda want you guys to be blind on purpose, but at the same time... I'm not that much of a jerk as to let you walk completely in the dark and have your characters die because of that. 

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To your second question. Yes and No. Yes it is, but at times once your characters get more powerful and there is a TON of shit to manage... it can get tiring, but in a good way, but also in a bad way.