Done!
I took 2.5 hours to finish it (ch 8, 9, short story the afterward - author seems like a fun person)
Seems like a very reasonable speed, but I can’t deny the mental effort (need a nap now lol)
Chapter 8
Social hierarchy + おまる + “why would you want to wash your face every day”… How come I am reading Honzuki?
For a second there I thought that maybe Kaito will snatch Geoffrey away to the 21st century and that’d be the reason why he’s not in the history books. But most likely he, indeed, died from something not historical enough to be remembered.
Kaito: I need to be extremely careful about what I say
/ 5 minutes later
Kaito: it’s so fun to threaten Geoffrey with my own health now haha I’ll make him listen to whatever I say
「色気抜きでか？」
Look, Geoffrey learned the concept of consent by the evening of the same day.
Chapter 9 (Ppl above me called it epilogue)
Welp, Kaito is already competing for Geoffrey’s affection with the… uhm
… can’t really get what he is… The prostitute young guy that plays the role of a woman somewhere outside of the bed too?
The probability is riiisiiiingggh
Short story is cute - just two more scenes for extra depth that could’ve been in their appropriate chapters.
Congrats! Thanks for reading with us, and I hope you feel inspired to read more F&B in the future!
Ch. 9 reply
Cyril is (afaik) primarily an actor; women weren’t allowed on the stage during that time in Elizabethan England, so companies would typically have young men play the female roles. Whatever salary he gets from acting likely isn’t enough for him to subsist on, so I believe the implication is is that he’s taken up prostitution on the side for extra money.
I’m having the physical copy as well. So no bonus story for me Just a short epilogue…
Hhhm. From difficulty I would vote it a bit down. Maybe more like L33? I am reading 京都寺町三条のホームズ | L31 as well, which is currently L31. And this feels similar to looking up specific vocabulary - though for F&B I definitely had to look up couple of vocabularies every page.
Comparing to すべて真夜中の恋人たち | L35 which I read which is also L35 I feel similar in difficulty, though. But I also would not have rated that L35
it’s mind boggling to me people think it’s a 31 level book…even if the rest of the book is level 31 … ch2 and 3 make it level 35 …If it had a couple of pages of difficult material ok not a huge deal but it’s not a couple of difficult pages.
There are two whole chapters and possibly some of 4 apparently… a large chunk of the lookups are freq higher than 50-60k…I’m almost done with ch3 … but no way I would be putting this level 31.
Sometimes (in general) the gradings on natively feel like they get artificially pushed down occasionally by readers are are at intermediate/advanced levels and sometimes don’t remember how hard a book was to read at an earlier stage…but what do I know…
It would be more interesting to me to see what a native Japanese reader thinks of how hard or easy this is to read (given the ch2/3 bits).
Looking forward to getting out of these insanely difficult bits of the book though… 7 ttsu pages left to finish ch3 … whew
I’m not sure who was thinking about rating it L31, but just wanted to clarify in case it was related to my post, that I mentioned I’d rate it L33 (comparing to the two books I referenced).
I was also thinking about those more difficult chapters, but came to another conclusion: “Okay, those chapters are definitely really difficult and L35, but I cannot ignore the rest 6 chapters that are less difficult, hence the overall rating should be less than L35”. I need to check, but I was of the impression that the level is referring to the average difficulty of a book and not the peak. - Nonetheless, it’s good that we compare difficulty by comparing books and not by explictly pointing to numbers.
Last year I was usually reading L28 - L30 graded books, so I expected F&B to be much more difficult to me, because it was graded as L35.
Yeah I feel the same way. The one and a half chapters were hard, but before and after it wasn’t that bad. I’d put the rest of them at maybe 31-33, and the tough parts probably around 35 (I haven’t read anything higher than 33 before this so that’s fuzzier). But it’s hard to say the whole book is 35 if a lot of it feels pretty approachable. If there wasn’t so much nautical/historical vocabulary I’d even say the rest of it was 29-30. It’s hard to think that overall the book was a 35 when there was a chapter and a half of struggle, but after that it was pretty chill.
Thanks for bringing back this hilarious scene! I was enjoying this, too
To that point, I found it a good idea from Kaito that he cannot read his own fortune
At least
Chapter 8 replies
Oh, that would be a cool development of story and then we would probably meet Kazuya again, too
I was also wondering, why a person close to Drake is not remembered in history. But what if, at some point Kaito tells the whole story and they somehow deliberately try not to get mentioned anywhere?
Or, yes, he would die or would have died without Kaito
Edit: was supposed to answer @shuly and not just post normally
If someone told me this book was easy while I was on chapter 3, I’d cry.
You’re almost there! The rule of thumb in this book (yes, until the end) for me was “see the dialogue? You are safe now, just get to the dialogue”.
I don’t have enough high level books read to compare the levels properly, but 31 it is not.
I’m the constant lookups kind of girl, and constantly looking up a level 31 book doesn’t leave me drained in the way this one did and I totally gave up on the clothes vocab.
I’m looking forward to your reaction of the chapters that come after this… setup. I wouldn’t go as low as shitsurei’s estimate, but it got mentally easier to read more in a week than I did with earlier chapters and I wonder how you’d experience that.
Yeah maybe 31 is a bit low. 本好き jumps all over the place in level, but I think it’s 32 now, and I’d say the easier parts of this are on par with like, paper making and other technical parts of that series.
Don’t get me wrong, I did not breeze through this book. I’m currently reading a L26 LN to nurse my wounds a bit
I would argue it makes the whole book 35… it’s not one or two pages it’s 2 full chapters. Books IMO should be rated based on the most difficult sections. It’s not one or two pages of tohokuben in flying witch … it’s two full chapters. Details about the rest of the book being easier could be put in the reviews/write up sections.
def true for me (not a big fishy reader)… but I have read a couple that are in the 29-31 (looking now that book has moved down in level on natively) the quantity of "less common/rarer stuff is much higher in this vol… yomitan freq counts surprise me and sometimes it’s identified as a rare kanji form
Anyways finished ch3 last night… being sick and all put me behind and hopefully ch4 isn’t too bad. Looking forward to it getting less frictiony… please stop the 8 -10 col run on sentences that I cannot parse…
though am a little annoyed at how ch3 ended… but it does setup a future meeting… so guess that’s ok… but from so kind and gentle to throwing him over the shoulder like a sack of rice … give the dude a break… he just went through a time tunnel in a very non truck-kun way
I must say I agree with that. Plus the non-history parts are also quite hard if I recall correctly, at least regarding all the special vocab for ships and stuff…
A book that I struggle through 20 hours of L35 text is going to feel a lot different than a book I struggle through 3 hours of L35 text for me. I also wouldn’t say that you can totally ignore the history chapter, but it’s not going to keep you from understanding what is happening in the narrative (just some of the context of it).
But difficulty is subjective, and the reason why more people grading something is better anyway.
To give my 2 cents on the difficulty question, I will say that, having read further into the series, I feel like there might be a case for dropping it maybe a level, maaaaaybe two, but you’re overall going to need a fairly wide vocabulary, at least for historical stuff, and be fairly comfortable with super-formal language (chapters and chapters of it), which definitely feels harder to me than other lower-L30 series. Certain character POVs also speak much more formally than Kaito, and on more difficult topics than “wow this pirate’s really hot ”.
I’m thinking you’ll all need to read more to see if you agree with me or not.
though that said, one thing natively is missing and really needs is a rating by volume! This wouldn’t be the first series that might need various levels depending on which volume you are reading…
Doubt I’d jump into the rest of the series until at least 2027… already this is a huge time suck and I have a 3x3 bingo card of shousetu to work on… along with a card of 50 vol of manga reading that is languishing at the moment.
Chapter 1 - Okay. Precarious cliff. Kaito is going to fall off, and when he wakes he’ll be on Drake’s ship got it.
Chapter 2 - He escaped the cliff. But those dreams! and parallel world talk! Kaito is going to accidentally trade places/or get stuck with AU him who knows Francis Drake. Got it.
Chapter 2…2 - Bowling! He is going to timeslip into the middle of Francis Drake’s infamous bowling game I got it I got it.
Chapter 3 - okay. First we meet Vincent, who will then put Kaito in a comprising situation, and he will be save but who else but—
Chapter 4/5 - Geoffrey you strange, red flag of a man. I love you <3
Even when he’s alive, Francis Drake sure does a good job haunting the narrative!
On a more serious note, my one complaint so far is I wish there was more description about the setting (what sort of buildings/stalls is he passing, what are the streets made up of, can you see the ocean, what does the captains quarters look like, what level of the ship is it on, etc) Sometimes I struggle picturing where characters are supposed to be and the environment they’re in.
Drake’s too powerful; Kazuya, Vincent, and Geoffrey can’t compete. XD
I would love to see this, not gonna lie.
I agree; it’d be lovely to have more scenic/environmental description, really drive home that 16th century flavor. I can at least tell you that I’m pretty certain the Gloria is a race-built galleon, so you could do some research there to help picture the ship, at least.
Just a short epilogue…
At least 
… give the dude a break… he just went through a time tunnel in a very non truck-kun way 
”.
