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.
I ended up reading too far by mistake and now all the comments in my head are for next weak. I’ll probably just go ahead and finish next week’s part too… This week ends on a difficult to stop reading part!
Man, I remember having so much trouble with this history lesson the first time I read this book; my Kindle copy is littered with highlights. It’s definitely from a very Spanish perspective; I sadly don’t know as much about Mary and her conflict with Elizabeth, but I’m pretty sure she’s not usually portrayed in such a positive light, haha.
And that Spanish perspective is filled nicely by Vicente here! I’d forgotten the fine details of what he talks about here; I was a bit surprised to see him mention Maria this early on. That and his reputation with women.
He finds the incredibly confusing case of an unconscious foreigner (who he reckons to be 12 or 13 ), and away go the wheels of “what the heck happened here?”. Interesting that he could hear the drum; I wonder if it was a proximity thing or what, given how Kazuya didn’t hear them.
It was definitely a dense start to the week after the end of the previous chapter. I wasn’t expecting the abrupt change to historical setup, especially since the suspense had been built up and I wanted to know what happened to 海斗.
When ビセンテ was introduced, I spent 20 minutes googling variations in Japanese and English to figure out if he was a historical figure, and came up with nothing except F&B results, which I was too scared of spoilers to click, so I’m guessing he’s a novel-only character. It was interesting to read his personal, very Spanish-leaning perspective in contrast to the more neutral and historical narrative at the beginning.
Following his introduction, it seemed like the author tried to exhaust every 夕暮れ-adjacent word possible after the initial 夕暮れ in the very sentence in which he was introduced (all within one kindle page):
夕焼け
夕方
陽が傾く
薄暮
夕闇
I got the feeling that it was definitely dusk.
I actually misread this at first. メアリー had been mentioned so much that I kind of glossed over マリア, and then was thinking, “メアリー is his younger sister???” until I re-read the name.
I kind of assumed that 海斗 could hear the drum through the barrier that separated the two times, but 和哉 could not for some reason. It made sense to me that ビセンテ could hear it because he was on the side of the time barrier where the sound was actually occurring.
I did think it was funny how ビセンテ pretty much wrote his own very off-base novel of 海斗’s origins, almost as if he’s trying to justify absconding with him (England is so greedy and evil, much better that I take this poor young man away with me).
It was very hard to stop at this break. I’m probably going to start the next section a little ahead of time tomorrow.
Yes, I believe that’s correct. With two exceptions, our main, core cast is, afaik, entirely fictional.
Thing is, I’m pretty sure that Drake’s actual physical drum was not being beat at the time; no one else comments on it, and it would’ve been big news in a port town like Plymouth.
This is a rather hilarious and reoccurring habit with him. He tends to fill in any blank detail with something that makes sense to him immediately, so you end up getting surprisingly complete narratives from him.
I’m really glad you guys are looking forward to it all! The historical info dumps are what I was most nervous about killing people’s interest, so I’m excited to see what you guys think of upcoming events!
Yesterday night I finished this part just on time, but I was too tired to post here .
It is quite an accomplishment for me to be caught up with the book club now, because it is far beyond my japanese level and I only started to read about a week ago (I was moving the last month, so especially in the beginning of the month free time was scarce).
Eventhough to say that I am “reading” it, is stretching it somewhat I am using the translator feature of the bookwalker app quite a bit
Nevertheless I understand enough to enjoy the story so far!!
But I have to mention that this week the history lesson was really tiring and exhausting to read. I enjoy dialogue much more but I guess that is because it’s easier to comprehend for me. Because in general I am very interested in history and I lost some reading time because I went down the Wikipedia rabbit hole and read quite a lot about Mary Stuart and linked articles
And the good thing about finishing one part late in the week: I immediately can start with the next part
Oh, glad to have you with us then! Great job on catching up, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts going forward!
I think we’ve still got some history ahead of us, but hopefully any really long sections like we just went through won’t be for a while, as far as I can recall.
And suddenly we get an introduction to Mary, Queen of Scots
I wonder how much Japanese learn about European history. If how much we learned about Japan is anything to go by, not much.
are you sure? I feel this part was particularly vague. (j/k)
it’s easy to just skim them, if someone isn’t interested. I think most Western people will have a vague idea about English history anyways.
I’ll probably just go ahead and finish next week’s part too… This week ends on a difficult to stop reading part!
but I guess that is because it’s easier to comprehend for me. Because in general I am very interested in history and I lost some reading time because I went down the Wikipedia rabbit hole and read quite a lot about Mary Stuart and linked articles 
(j/k)
but at long last… 
