I finished the first short story, 無尾巷底左邊那個房子 by 四弄一號, it was really great! There’s a double mystery: a good murder case and the identity of our mysterious narrator. I love the humour, and the end was very good too.
I’m currently at 10 new words per day on my flashcards, but since I’m studying the AQ, I have a huge source of new words right now, and I’m adding some words I already know if they contain a character I don’t know well. This way, it also feeds my character cards. So it’s not effectively 10 unknown words per day that I’m going through, but less than that. I’ll upgrade my quota to 15, and test for a few days. Might even go to 20 in the future.
I’m so happy to study the AQ. Even though I did enjoy the first acts of Nod-krai AQ, I also did not love it to the point of studying it. And the more it went, the less I enjoyed it anyway. So it was not easy to find study material I was passionate about during 6.x, some event stories were really good, but not all of them.
I originally planned to go through 2 chapters and then play Genshin, but I ended up playing until chapter 22. It was so engrossing! I don’t know how many chapters there are in total, but I think I did the final boss? I’m glad we don’t need to farm it, because the animations are so long on this one.
Keeping the end for tomorrow!
I forgot to update when I finished the first short story, but I found it very sad, though very good too, as always.
I couldn’t sleep last night, so I started 小偷抓住的手. Each story by Otsuichi feels so unique!
I’m halfway through the first short story, and it’s a very intriguing start!
I’m playing a bit everyday, just progressing one or two scenes at a time, but I have to say it again: the plot is really really good so far (I just finished the council part). For once, they managed to make the story really suspenseful, with a lot of mystery.
I enjoy Genshin story in general, but I also don’t find it the most suspenseful most of the time (like there will be a bad guy, and we’re going to defeat them), but here I can’t wait to know how it will unfold.
It’s crazy that Reverse 1999 current story is as suspenseful and engrossing and both happen at the same time, whereas recent patches were extremely boring in both games to me (AQ Act X and the Enigma story for example).
閲覧厳禁 is so different from 硝子の塔の殺人, it’s hard to think it’s the same author who wrote both.
I enjoyed reading it, because I love horror in general, but I’m not sure I liked the editing direction all that much.
The story, the plot and the characters are all fine, it’s just not as shocking or scary as it claims to be. It’s entertaining for sure, and very easy to read, but that’s the point: it almost feels like the book was made to be easy to read. I would say that the story in itself is very short, maybe more the length of a novella, but it’s artificially expanded with page layouts that leave a lot of blank space here and there. Layout effects are also not always relevant, for example, some sentences were in bold or used special fonts, but it did not have much impact in my opinion? I also found that some visual inclusions (the book contains pictures and plans) did not brought much, and were there mostly to make the reading experience easy and pleasant (and make the book look appealing if you flip through it in the bookshop?). They felt more like additions than a necessary part of the plot, and most of the things showed could have been described instead.
Still, it was entertaining, reads very quickly and very easily, and I personally enjoyed it from start to finish, but the story was also not as terrifying or impactful as I expected it to be.
Finished! The end was good, but I also didn’t find the book particularly shocking or scary…
As planned, my next read in Chinese is going to be the 24th Mystery Writers of Taiwan Award collection. I only read the one from last year, and I loved it, every short story was fantastic.
The book is really good, but every time I pick it up I get mad at the digital version.
I looked at the book I didn’t like this year so far: 5 out of 38 books read. Two Japanese, two Korean and one Hong Kong novel.
I really don’t know if it should be a 3 or 4 star rating, because I clearly disliked the book, but it’s hard to tell whether it comes from the book or me.
I do think the book was much too ambitious, and that was a real flaw in my opinion. It spawns 20 years and several countries, and tries to cover every major events that have shaped the region at the time, and that was just too much for just one book. From 9/11 to the London terrorist attacks, to reflexions on American military presence in Japan or the more recent Honk Kong protests. Each part of the novel takes place in a different country at a different time of the 21st century, but because the novel needs to lay out the setting for the reader, we end up with a lot of telling and explanations, and there’s less room for the plot. As a result, everything felt rushed, things happen by chance, or because our characters are so strong. They have access to large intelligence, easily gain access to what they need, solve everything and have really good combat abilities. Their small agency is like a nest of elite agents.
The novel goes from explanations about political or social events to plot parts which a lot of action scenes too, but I found none of them really satisfactory. The plot parts were just not my cup of tea, I like realistic scenario, I really don’t care for super heroes. And the setting parts deserved more space, and I think they should be integrated with the story on a deeper level rather than being artificially explained. The first story/chapter does this very well, but the following ones less so. It felt like we were told how the social climate would affect our characters rather than living through it with them. When the last chapters introduce a new character who again tells about their life, I didn’t really care. Too much telling and not enough time actually spent with the characters.
As a result, I really didn’t care for our main cast at all. The action based, super agents tone was also not what I was looking for. I did find the first chapter really good, it was a good police procedural, our protagonist was just a good police officer, the plot was suspenseful, and it cleverly mixed reality and fiction, integrating real persons and cases to the story. But then I started liking the following chapters less and less, and I probably would have DNFed it, if the book weren’t part of a reading challenge.
Overall, I think the author wanted to tell to many things in this book, and as a result it’s a bit all over the place, and the reading experience suffered from it.
Finished it! It took me almost a month. In the end, I never really cared for the characters, apart from Wong Yuen-man, so the last story that was more on a personal level left me rather indifferent. I think that overall, I was just tired of reading this book.
I tried a 2p/2p on Mizuki, I’ve been playing around with the pieces I have, I’m not sure which ones are the best. Is it better to have more EM or more crit? What about ER? Her burst will trigger more swirls so it can’t be bad? But I probably can’t burst every rotation with 120 ER anyway, so it might be better to build no ER at all and focus on crit… ?
I don’t know if this patch’s story is easier to follow or if my Chinese has improved, but I find it very easy to read. I’ve always struggled with Reverse 1999 stories, they’re so abstract sometimes or super specialised in one field. It sometimes feels like reading an academic paper… So some stories have been a real struggle to play in Chinese. I especially find everything related to Laplace a pain to understand. Even in English I’m not sure I follow everything, and I’m not interested in the researchers’ discussions anyway, so the stories focused entirely on Laplace have been my least favourites.
But On Another’s Sorrow is Genshin level so far (in terms of language difficulty).
I love the story so so much, there are so many fronts and confrontations, and it’s really cool when everyone fights together.
Getting there!
I really need to do something with 千禧黑夜… The stories are all fine, some are suspenseful, and once I start one it’s usually okay. But each part of the novel was a different story, and chapter 1 of the last part was also a somewhat independent story, and it looks like chapter 2 will start yet a different one, so it’s harder to find motivation to pick up the book than if it were a continuous plot. Though I’m sure things will echo each other in the end, and everything might end up being linked.
I really want to finish the book this week. I could try one chapter per day, but the lengths vary. In any case, I just need to focus and just read this book, and be done with it.
Let’s do this! 
