Week 10 👻 🍰 Medium 🔮

Welcome to the tenth week of Medium 霊媒探偵城塚翡翠!

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

Week Up to Approximate Pages Percent Paperback page
Week 10 - Dec 11 to end of chapter 53 66% 327

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 week 10 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:

1 Like

I’m pretty sure that’s the place that was really weird to me.

Having (girl; forgot her name) randomly possess her? Maybe. But she is interacting with the current situation instead of being confused/in the dead frozen state AND she knows stuff that are currently happening. That breaks all the rules established so far and solves the situation for free. Very annoying.

6 Likes

Since each week’s reading are in weird places, I’ve just been reading along to reach the end of the chapter at the appropriate place, not necessarily in the middle of the week…

Anyway, another mediocre story. The last one is going to have to really be great to make up for this… It doesn’t even feel like it needed to be a story in this collection. The only times Hisui’s powers came up were to tell us that the killer is a third-year girl, and then the thriller finale once the mystery was already resolved. Feels like this story was more an excuse for the author to show-off his knowledge of cameras than anything.

There were two suspects this time, so that’s… better?

This story also felt very much like it’s written for young men to insert themselves into the generic protagonist (he has no personality traits so it’s easier to project yourself onto him, you see?) who has to protect the heroine who’s cool and beautiful and powerful but still helpless

7 Likes

Tbh, when that first happened I thought it was the spirit of the girl’s sister, not the recent victim… Anyway, it’s magic, and that was just the exciting finale (not the mystery plot), so I guess rigor/consistency wasn’t super important.

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This is 100% a Gary Sue story

Likewise think this is the protective ghost (forget the term). I’m personally imagining that ghost tapping the shoulder of the recently deceased girl and being like, ‘yo, quit crying and stuff for a sec, I got a message’ kinda like Patrick Swayze did to Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost

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I’m one of the ones who’ll be zooming ahead of the scheduled pace, but I did finish this section yesterday.

…Honestly I don’t have much to comment on? I feel like that’s been the trend as we go farther and farther in. Like, the book is fine, I’ve read much worse, but I just don’t have much to talk about.

Even Hisui being possessed by already-forgot-her-name was a, “great, we can wrap this up now right?” kind of moment for me.

Although now that I’m thinking about it, I got a small giggle during the murderer’s confession. What a proactive girl; “high school’s only 3 years long, so you can’t waste it!” Indeed. And 香月, what? You feel bad for the murderer because you believe people are artificially bound by the rules of society or whatever? What? …Are you secretly psychotic? Is it your split personality that’s the Interlude murderer?

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At this point I kept screaming inside please don’t let it be the case. Also don’t let those two get together for no reason.
(Not going to say how that went, obviously)

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I’m probably also going to read ahead… Not sure yet, but I read the last two weeks together and it was fine.

Nothing to add really. :person_shrugging:

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Okay I’m curious how many people will still vote “reading along this week” next time since so many of you said you’re going to read ahead :smiley:

I am still following the schedule and probably will till the end :see_no_evil: This is my first mystery book club, is it usual that people read ahead in the end or is this book just especially made for reading ahead? :smiley:

7 Likes

I am going to be following the schedule because I have too many other book clubs going on in parallel to be able to give this one more time :slight_smile: I might read the final week a little ahead just to close it out this year, but I’ll see how I feel about that then.

4 Likes

I found it more interesting that the murderer wanted to speak to him specifically. I mean, she hardly knew him, and definitely not any better than any of the others, so what was it that attracted her to him?

I think it’s this book. Sometimes people will speed up towards the end because it’s exciting, but most usually follow the schedule. In my case, I was behind the club anyway so I wasn’t able to participate. I’m juggling too many books at the moment, so when I caught up, I just kept going to reduce the pile a little. Also, this really is a book that works better if read faster.

8 Likes

I think this book is a bit special. But also, people tend to speed up towards the end, as people want to know how it ends (or are fed up with the book and just want it to end. :sweat_smile:)

Edit:

:100:

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I also have too many book clubs and that’s a big reason why I won’t speed up.

And because I can’t take too much of the theatrical acting of the audiobook at once.

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One reason I wanted to get it out of the way :joy:

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Here to let you know it’s still understandable at 2x speed!

But yeah, I rarely speed up in clubs. I’m just a bit swamped right now and this book feels kind of like a burden (because I don’t enjoy it as much as my other books) and so I’m also team “read fast so I can’t get back to other books and not worry about this” :sweat_smile:

6 Likes

Normally I’ll stick to the schedule pretty consistently because my personal life gets so busy it’s hard to read ahead, but now that I’m on vacation for the rest of the month I want to start crossing stuff off my list in preparation for the new year, and medium’s an easy one to check off.

7 Likes

I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand I don’t want this twist because I think the idea is kinda meh and predictable? But on the other hand Kougetsu being the serial killer might give him a bit of personality and complexity depending on how it’s executed.
And tbh seeing him always paying attention to women’s appearance and thinking about souls and death and after death I won’t get surprised if this comes true.

I don’t trust hisui either. Just a feeling but I always think she sees and knows more than she says. Like maybe her supernatural powers aren’t as useless as she claims. But why would she lie?:woman_shrugging:t2:

8 Likes

Forgot to write my comment to that. I really wonder a bit if that’s the case and if the Interlude plays in the past since the Interlude person wants to get closer to Hisui and we start with the main character suddenly becoming very close to her and conveniently a lot of bonding happens and people die around her that usually have a common thread with him (his school friend, his author friend, high schoolers who are interested in the same hobby as him?) - I felt additionally like those suspicions might be true when he was going on about finding the link between the victims and the killer and on the other hand, he has a link to all the murders. But yeah, then we actually witnessed the murder being done by a different person, so I don’t think that theory makes any sense :upside_down_face: and otherwise there are so many plot holes and I can never tell if it’s because of lazy writing or if the author wants us to figure something out :laughing:

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I am so behind… Especially considering this was my nomination :see_no_evil:

Kougetsu definitely has a creepy vibe, it was interesting that the culprit in this story thought he would understand her desire to look at dying people’s expressions of suffering! At least the interrogation was fun since it was a little unhinged but again something about the style of these stories makes me really not care about trying to work out who did it. For me it contrasts badly with Higashigawa Tokuya’s Nazotoki stories - they’re shorter, funnier, and although there’s usually maximum 3-4 culprits, it’s a nice challenge to work them out!

8 Likes