This is very much a work in progress, and I’m looking for comments and suggestions on the format.
Those entries marked spoilers are not really spoilers in the usual sense of the word, because the prologue is very much world-building, but I labelled them such just the same. Also, I haven’t blurred them, only listed them as drop-down details because Obsidian won’t let me use the spoiler tag and I’m lazy !
Also : I’ve read up until the end of chapter 1.1 so far. The prologue is hard, chapter 1.1 is far easier and reads much like 江戸川乱歩
I’m haven’t even reached half of the prologue and I had to look up the dictionary so many times, even with the katakana names. I’m going to read the Google translation of the Prologue to make sure I actually follow the story. Not giving up yet. Oh yes, your prologue references also helped a lot. I will continue to check them out as I read the rest of the Prologue. Thank you
I’m very eager to see everyone’s thoughts on the book! I have a lot on my shelf right now so I probably can’t do a dedicated reread, but I’ll certainly follow along with everyone’s thoughts and give my input wherever I can. It can be a daunting task, but I didn’t write the review with the intent to scare anyone away, and I think it might be much easier if people work together to figure out the references. Good luck everyone and have fun!
I’ve finally come home (after three weeks away for work, yay !), so here is the physical page count :
Chapter
Sub-chapter page count
Chapter page count
序篇 降矢木一族釈義
16
第一篇 死体と二つの扉を繞って
47
一、栄光の奇蹟
13
二、テレーズ吾われを殺せり
19
三、屍光故ゆえなくしては
15
第二篇 ファウストの呪文
56
一、Undinus sich winden（水精よ蜿くれ）
22
二、鐘鳴器の讃詠歌で……
16
三、易介は挾まれて殺さるべし
18
第三篇 黒死館精神病理学
80
一、風精……異名は？
18
二、死霊集会の所在
28
三、莫迦、ミュンスターベルヒ！
34
第四篇 詩と甲胄と幻影造型
40
一、古代時計室へ
22
二、Salamander soll gluhen（火精よ燃え猛れ）
18
第五篇 第三の惨劇
57
一、犯人の名は、リュッツェン役の戦歿者中に
44
二、宙に浮んで……殺さるべし
13
第六篇 算哲埋葬の夜
48
一、あの渡り鳥……二つに割れた虹
32
二、大階段の裏に……
16
第七篇 法水は遂に逸せり⁉
55
一、シャビエル上人の手が……
27
二、光と色と音――それが闇に没し去ったとき
28
第八篇 降矢木家の壊崩
76
一、ファウスト博士の拇指痕
32
二、伸子よ、運命の星の汝の胸に
18
三、父よ、吾も人の子なり
26
So apart for chapter 3 and 8, which are almost twice as long, and chapter 4, which is shorter at 40 pages, other chapters are between 50 and 60 pages. What about a semi-flexible schedule based on chapters (with one thread per chapter) and suggested weekly endpoints, like this :
Start/End dates
Chapters
Suggested Weekly Endpoints
Total pages
Total week number
Sept 1-28
Prologue, Chapter 1
One subchapter a week, including a week for the prologue itself
63 pages
4 weeks
Sept 29 - Oct 19
Chapter 2
1 subchapter a week
56 pages
3 weeks
Oct 20 - November 23
Chapter 3
1 week for 3.1, 2 weeks for each of 3.2 and 3.3
80 pages
5 weeks
November 24 - December 7
Chapter 4
1 subchapter a week
40 pages
2 weeks
Dec 8-28
Chapter 5
2 weeks for 5.1, 1 week for 5.2
57 pages
3 weeks
December 29 - January 18
Chapter 6
2 weeks for 6.1, 1 week for 6.2
48 pages
3 weeks
Jan 19 - Feb 8
Chapter 7
mix-n-match ?
55 pages
3 weeks
Feb 8 - March 8
Chapter 8
2 weeks for 8.3, 1 week for 8.2, 2 weeks for 8.3
76 pages
5 weeks
Does it look too lopsided ? What do you think ? Of course, that can be changed once every one has had an actual look at the book (past the prologue…)
It sounds very long, indeed. But it’s not only the difficulty: the book itself is 500+ pages, that must be taken into account as well.
Thank you very much for the schedule @Magyarapointe ! It looks really promising to me. (in the sense that the chances of me getting through it has become more realistic ) The good thing is that we can always reevaluate after, say, chapter 2 or so, and see whether we want to keep the pace or whether we want to speed up.
That’s what I was about to suggest. Because I’m really at a loss. The prologue is hard (yes, it bears repeating), but I’ve now read up to 1.3 and so far, linguistically speaking, it’s pretty much what you would expect from a book written in 1934 : alternate kanjis, some old expressions, but after the fifth 云う, 恰度, and 見給え, you have them figured out, and it’s nothing a good dictionary can’t handle. There leaves the references to figure out, sure, but stylistically speaking, for now, it doesn’t seem so bad. And I don’t have especially mad japanese skills…
So maybe let’s start at one subchapter a week for the prologue, chapter 1, and maybe chapter 2, and reevaluate then ?
I may have made a mistake in ordering this version. It’s beautiful but it’s thick! I got it because it supposedly has pretty complete annotations in the book, but I was not expecting such a big boi.
There’s also a picture or the first page of one of the あとがき. (I think there are no spoilers in there so I posted it. :)) It mentioned that they and probably a lot of people give up on this book during the prologue, which I found really interesting. It matches what @Magyarapointe said about the difficulty too.
No, I only read a little bit from one of the afterwords. I’m still deciding between holding off until September or checking the prologue early… Not sure yet.
Re-reading in September sounds like a solid plan too.
Now that is some serious looking tome !!! And it looks like it’s annotated ?
To be honest, with my paperback and Aozora editions, I was wondering whether the Japanese were vastly more educated about… everything and anything really, or whether no one ever picked up this book.
The prologue…. Yeah, it’s horrible. But what I’ve read after so far is great. And, personally, I find all the references fascinating.
It’s heavily annotated! The lower third of a regular page is reserved for annotations, so about obi wide. A lot of the pages use it up, too, but there’s enough were it leaves a lot of empty space and even some without any annotations, resulting in a 2/3 page! There’s especially many of these in the latter parts of the book. I guess they wanted to have a uniform look? And at that point a couple more pages wouldn’t make a huge difference anyway. There’s also 2 lengthy 解題・解説 (23 pages total), 2 excerpts of letters published during the original publication in the same magazine, one by Edogawa Ranpo! And then there’s 20 pages in triple column about the changes made during editing, with notes about why. (‘Handwritten in manuscript’ and such.) Since it says what’s edited, it’s of course full of spoilers and I’ve only read the bit about the title, which is a reference to a ‘pestilence mansion’ and the first draft had 病 in the title.
I took some more pics where you can see the publisher notes about this book and the original title picture from the magazine. Oh, and the first actual page to show the annotations.
Oh true, that did not click with me yet Of course, 黒死 is 黒死病 - Jisho.org or “Black Death” (in German: Pest) Thanks for pointing this out. Makes the story even more terrifying for me!
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It’s beautiful but it’s thick! I got it because it supposedly has pretty complete annotations in the book, but I was not expecting such a big boi.
Thanks for pointing this out. Makes the story even more terrifying for me!
