終わり 👻 🍰 Medium 🔮

Japanese Reading Book Clubs
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Welcome to the final week of Medium 霊媒探偵城塚翡翠!

Home thread for announcements, wiki, etc

We are following the below schedule (page counts may vary based on your medium):

Week Up to Approximate Pages Percent End page
Week 13 - Jan 1 “Iced Coffee” - end 54 100% 474

I will generally copy this information over thread to thread each week for ease of finding - you can always expect the schedule at the top of any weekly thread :slight_smile:

:policeman: Law and Order :policewoman:

  • Any reveals, for the current chapters must be behind spoilers or detail curtains. When we get further in you don’t need to hide details that were revealed in previous chapters.
  • Questions on vocab, grammar, nuance, and the like are both welcome and encouraged. If you’re not sure if it’s a spoiler, assume it is and use one of the above options to hide the text.
  • You are encouraged to speculate and guess wildly
  • Be kind about other peoples’ wild guesses :sparkling_heart:
  • Even if you don’t read the chapter(s) in time, you are still encouraged to post in the thread for that reading once you have finished it. I advise not reading ahead in the threads as you may see spoilers.

To gauge participation - a poll!

Are you reading the final week of Medium?

  • Yes, I’m planning to read along/am reading along this week
  • I’m reading, but not at the same pace as the club
  • I’m just following the discussion :popcorn:
0 voters

Happy sleuthing! :male_detective:

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I read this part last week; not much of it made enough of an impression on me that I remember there being anything I really wanted to comment on. I was right about all that gesturing being misdirection, though.

According to the 解説, the book Hisui was reading in the epilogue is this one:

tamariz-magicrainbow-400

It seems to be a (rather expensive!) book of theory about stage magic and how to perform in ways that your audience can never figure out how the tricks work.

The fact that the author of medium is an amateur magician fits with their liking for clever tricks and narrative deceits, I think.

Overall, as I said last week, I think this is definitely one for readers who like the puzzle solving find-the-trick type mystery. But overall I never found myself thinking “ugh, I have to read another section of this this week”, and this book was often fairly high up on my to read pile each week. So while I can certainly see all the flaws we’ve discussed as we read it, I also had fun reading it, and rated it three stars.

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I personally enjoy ‘find the trick’ mysteries but this one didn’t really scratch that itch for me. I think because we spent so long being led to believe there was no trick to find, that it was all ghosts and then we got those weak reveals initially that the joy of it was lost for me.

That’s fair. I gave it 2 stars as I expect if I were not reading it with the club I would have stopped reading after awhile. I think most of my fun came from commiserating here about the ridiculous characters rather than the book itself :sweat_smile: I do think in that way it actually ended up being a good book club book despite me earlier saying it didn’t seem a good fit as one. Sometimes books are just more fun as a group, even if the discussion is less in praise of it than you’d expect

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Agreed! While i didn’t read at the pace of the club, I enjoyed participating in the discussion. I feel like complaining together is much more fun than simply agreeing that a book is good. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I really struggled with the last part because I was sooo bored and it didn’t make sense to me. It’s okay if something doesn’t make sense, but then I at least need to be entertained and I wasn’t.

I stopped the audiobook for the last chapter and just skimmed the rest of the book, which is something I rarely do, so I was really unhappy with the last part.
I do think the book has some positives, mainly possibly serving as an entry level mystery as it is fairly easy to follow alongside a well produced audiobook.

I agree that reading with a club was fun and thankfully the discussion stayed lively!

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Oh no! Was she really crying? :joy:
Wasn’t really a fan of this last scene. Felt like attending a boring class with an overconfident lecturer who blames students for everything. :smile: :roll_eyes:
Don’t have any plans to read the next volumes but I’m still curious to see in what other ways Hisui will solve mysteries.

Although I didn’t like the book, there were many moments I felt the book is a page turner and I really wanted to know what will come next. Ultimately it was the negative points that won though.

And I’m glad I joined the club. It was fun :smile: and if not for the club I wouldn’t have picked a level 30+ book anytime soon and would’ve stucked in reading children’s books forever.
This was a very difficult book for me and I spent lots of time on it, but it gave me a confidence boost, so no regrets. :v:

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I’m glad that overall this book seemed to work out as a book club pick, even if it wasn’t especially loved as a book! It’s interesting to see everyone’s opinions. I have read other books in English that do the unreliable guilty narrator mystery a lot better, so while the author gave themselves a big challenge with the structure of the book, it could have been better executed imo :woman_shrugging: I do very much enjoy mysteries, but this didn’t quite give me the atmosphere or satisfaction I was hoping for. Interesting to see it so highly rated in a lot of different blogs!

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This has been the true mystery for me! It seems genuinely highly rated by so many different mystery book reviewers, but it doesn’t really pull of the gimmick it’s trying to do! I wonder if Japanese audiences feel similarly about some highly rated Western books :thinking:

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I feel similary like this about many highly rated Western books :laughing:

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