On the way back from a camping trip, five classmates and their chaperone, unable to return home due to a landslide, end up staying in a mysterious Western-style mansion. However, the mansion’s owner, who calls himself “the Count,” declares the start of a “Werewolf Game.” The rules are simple: identify the werewolf disguised as one of the group and decide by vote. However, if the chosen person is not the werewolf, that person will be eaten by the wolf…
Escape is impossible until the correct answer is found. The ultimate survival game has begun! Will they trust their friends, or betray them? In this ultimate game, the courage, intelligence, and true friendship of the boys and girls will be tested!
<For upper elementary students, with furigana provided for all kanji>
Spoilers should always be hidden using spoiler blur.
When discussing a specific section, please mention where you are in the book, ideally by chapter so people reading different versions have a clear point of reference.
Feel free to read ahead if it’s exciting, but please refrain from spoiling ahead of the appropriate week.
If you have a question about grammar, vocab, cultural things, etc - ask! That’s a welcome part of the discussion too, and other readers will be happy to help.
Will you be reading along when the club starts?
Yes
No
Maybe
I’ll be reading, but at my own pace
0voters
What type of media will you be consuming the book as?
This has been on my wishlist for a while, but I’m trying to keep myself out of more bookclubs by only reading things I already own or nominate myself. I’m still hoping it goes on Kindle Unlimited (or more than 50% off sale) before we start so I can break my rules
So, here are two polls to gauge the mood and reading ability. These will be used as guidelines to select the schedule; I’m not gonna blindly take the most voted for option. (E.g. if most people would “be okay” with 13 weeks, but it turns out that would be too fast for several readers, we will probably go with 15 or 20 weeks instead.)
I’d be okay with…
8 weeks (30 pages/week)
13 weeks (20 pages/week)
15 weeks (15 pages/week)
20 weeks (10 pages/week)
0voters
Select all options you think would be alright for the club. You can select as many as you want. Selecting slower options even if you are able to read quickly can open up the club for slower participants.
I think the fastest speed I could read at would be…
Less than 10 pages per week
10 pages/week (~20 weeks)
15 pages/week (~15 weeks)
20 pages/week (~13 weeks)
30 pages/week or more (~8 weeks)
0voters
The concrete schedules I’m suggesting
Here’s what I think about schedules:
The beginning, especially the first week, should be gentle so that everyone (especially beginning readers) can get familiar with the setting, the characters, the writing style and the grammar and vocab the author likes to use.
After a while, when everybody is settled, it’s fine to raise the speed.
No weird inter-chapter weeks. Reading “the end of chapter 2 and the start of chapter 3” in a week makes for awkward breaks.
Here’s the chapter breakdown based on my digital copy:
Chapter
% of pages
approximate physical page count
1
10.95%
25
2
9.68%
22
3
7.02%
16
4
6.20%
14
5
10.22%
23
6
7.51%
17
7
7.48%
17
8
9.90%
22
9
7.07%
16
10
5.14%
12
11
10.58%
24
12
3.90%
9
8 weeks (~30 pages/week), a.k.a. “I wanna know who the werewolf is ASAP”
Week
Chapter
approximate physical page count
1
1
25
2
2
22
3
3+4
30
4
5
23
5
6+7
34
6
8
22
7
9+10
28
8
11+12
31
13 weeks (~20 pages/week), a.k.a. “one chapter per week”
Week
Chapter
approximate physical page count
1
1
10
2
1 cont.
15
3
2
22
4
3
16
5
4
14
6
5
23
7
6
17
8
7
17
9
8
22
10
9
16
11
10
12
12
11
24
13
12
9
15 weeks (~15 pages/week; some chapters speed up later), a.k.a. “one chapter per week with a more gentle first half”
Week
Chapter
approximate physical page count
1
1
10
2
1 cont.
15
3
2
11
4
2 cont.
11
5
3
16
6
4
14
7
5
11
8
5 cont.
12
9
6
17
10
7
17
11
8
22
12
9
16
13
10
12
14
11
24
15
12
9
20 weeks (~10 pages/week; some chapters speed up later)
An attempt to tempt you a little bit more: Books with mystery elements like “who’s the werewolf?” are often much more fun when you can speculate with others in a club. And since you’ll probably read it anyway at some point since it’s already on your wishlist - it might be worth to break your rules here even if it doesn’t go on sale. It’s probably the opportunity to enjoy it the most!
Ugh you’re gonna convince me to read it
I have a bit of time until we start to finish up some other stuff I’m reading, so it might go on sale or maybe I’ll just read it anyway
I ordered my copy yesterday! Thought it was funny, CDJapan’s ‘based on this order you might like’ category was showing me almost entirely WK book club picks. They’re watching us
Looking at how long of a series this is I’m also curious about the mystery of how those kids continue to stumble into what I assume are more werewolf death games. Are they super unlucky? Is there something in it for them? Is their world just full of werewolf death games? Guess it’ll still be a while until I will find out…
(Until then in my mind it’s “Let’s never go back to werewolf death game mansion!”, epilogue, next book: “Let’s go back to the mansion!” like in Tom Cardy’s Jurassic Park song)
I saw the rest of the series when I was browsing earlier and had the same question. The (possible) quantity of werewolf death games in this world reminds me of those British murder mysteries where there are hundreds of episodes of murders happening in the same small town, and you start wondering why everyone in this town is dying and why no one seems to have noticed.
I knew there was more than one but I didn’t realise the series was that long xD I’m guessing that the whole thing is not all werewolf death games and some are them trying to stop the Count. But it might just be a new game each book I guess, though I would have thought that would be too repetitive. My guess is there is a bigger story that is going to unfold and the werewolf death game is more of a setting to introduce the reoccurring characters throughout the whole series.
Looking at the titles, I think the chance of them all being werewolf games is at least moderately high. All of them have 「〇〇の人狼ゲーム」 in the extended title. But I’d also think that would become repetitive rather quickly, so maybe the author’s interpretation of a werewolf game is extraordinarily flexible?
I hadn’t even looked at the extended titles for fear of possible spoilers xD Thats interesting yeah, the author’s interpretation of a werewolf game probably is quite flexible with so many books.
Perhaps the books all feature different characters? I haven’t looked at them, but ~17 books with the same characters and premise would be surprising and difficult to pull off.
Natively page: 人狼サバイバル 1 絶体絶命! 伯爵の人狼ゲーム | L25
I’m really looking forward to reading it with everyone.
)