We are following the below schedule (page counts may vary based on your medium):
Week
Up to
Approximate Pages
Percent
Paperback page
Week 1
* - last sentence ending 最後になった
31
8%
40
Week 2
* - last sentence ending 視ていたのだろう
26
14%
67
Week 3
* - last sentence ending 明かしてください
26
19%
94
Week 4
end of 第一話
24
24%
118
Week 5
* - last sentence ending じいぅと見つめていた
28
31%
155
Week 6
* - last sentence ending 席に立った
25
37%
181
Week 7
end of 第二話
29
43%
210
Week 8
* - last sentence ending 女の子です
29
49%
242
Week 9
* - last sentence ending 見つかったそうです
33
56%
275
Week 10
* - last sentence ending 愛しげに抱きしめた
33
64%
317
Week 11
* - last sentence ending はそう判断した
26
70%
344
Week 12
English sentence containing “Iced coffee”
29
76%
372
Week 13
English sentence containing “Grimoire”
29
81%
402
Week 14
* - last sentence ending その経緯を知りたいです
44
90%
455
Week 15
until 解説
29
96%
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
Law and Order
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
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 7 of Medium?
Yes, I’m planning to read along/am reading along this week
So I’m really not sure what to think of the narrator.
He doesn’t care about one of his acquaintances getting killed enough to make an effort (he’s not angry enough? ) but 翡翠 showing some positive emotion is enough to have made it all worthwile. The whole one hour of work it apparently was for him, genius that he is.
Aside from that, I thought it was a bit ridiculous how long it took them to connect the dream to mirrors. It’s only in the name of the villa! But okay, as the reader it is much more in your face. I accept this one.
But really, why is 翡翠 so passive in all this? Except for wanting our narrator to do his thing, it’s like that is all she’d doing. ‘I had a dream… I wonder what it could be? You figure it out, I cannot think’.
I’m hoping she’s set up like this so we can get some character growth throughout the book…
Funnily enough I still enjoy reading the book, even with all the moments it holds for me.
I can’t say it’s very satisfying. I’m just not that into supernatural elements in mysteries I suppose, and also the logic felt over explained under the premise is “Hisui is bad with mystery novels”.
I’m entertained but as this goes on it’s more in a so-bad-it’s-good way.
Every setup seems interesting and I’m always hooked.
I really liked the premise of this case, knowing who the killer is but having to work backwards to prove it.
What I didn’t like
There seems to be very little suspense or stakes, and when there are stakes, they are resolved quickly.
The role of 翡翠 is too passive for me, and on the contrary, 香月 is a bit too smart and solves everything quite easily without any reason for me to believe that he is good at it? (When the detective was introduced, it was even said that 香月 wasn’t the best at solving cases, but that he had “interesting views”. At least that’s how I understood it )
香月 makes little sense to me (e.g. he is rather unmoved by the death of his friend) and his narrations are a bit too focused on women, so I miss descriptions of the male characters.
So I’m not really invested in any of the characters, because they seem a bit bland to me.
The deductions of how a crime happened feel a bit boring and it takes too long (for me) to get to the point. I always take a break when the deduction is happening because it doesn’t really grab me.
I guess there will be a big supernatural twist at the end that plays a role in all the murders, but I’m personally not a big fan of grand reveals at the end if the reading up to that point isn’t enjoyable (for me)
I would probably finish the book regardless of the book club, but I don’t think I would recommend it to anyone at this stage I still think the book could turn around and create a case that I like. So, let’s see
I did predict the “it was the view from the bathroom mirror” part before reading this week’s section, but not the other parts.
I feel like we must have a bit of a tone shift incoming at some point – the serial killer bit in the earlier interlude is pretty dark, whereas the cases so far have been written in a comparatively light “solve the puzzle” way. (Obviously people you know getting murdered would be pretty grim in real life, but it’s not written in a way that makes you feel like the characters are seriously shocked and scared about it.)
It was better than the first story, but that’s a pretty low bar…
Once again it seems there was room for a cool fakeout solution, but instead we just swerved right back into the most obvious solution. And the author asks good questions (“Is the information I got from Hisui preventing me from considering certain possibilities?”) and then does nothing with them.
The mirror thing seemed pretty obvious. I don’t think it’s just b/c we’re reading as a story… All three going to the bathroom in that order is the EXACT testimony at question.
While a bit anime-overemotional, I thought the “Isn’t having a barbeque together enough??” was a nice bit of character-building for Hisui (that didn’t involve comparing a body part to dessert)
As far as the mystery resolution goes… Am I missing something, or did nothing change about the argument regarding Yukino’s fingerprints on the mirror? Like, Shirou points out that it makes no sense for her to touch the mirror after cleaning it, and Kaneba just brushes him off. So how come the second time around Kaneba accepts that as proof that the culprit must be one of the other two?? The computer locking was a nice idea at least, and I think this was the perfect-sized story for it.
Anyway, @cat I’d like to officially request that the thread titles also include going forward
I almost agree with everyone here, so won’t repeat what is already said.
So far the horror elements were more enjoyable for me than the mystery and suspense aspects.
If the book focused only on occult and horror stuff I think I would’ve liked it more. But the way the author tries to mix supernatural and detective elements makes neither of them satisfactory: supernatural part is underdeveloped, mystery/logic part is so straightforward.
Well unless we see a change in the upcoming chapters.
In this chapter I liked the dream and how it was related to the mirror.
And with previous chapter I was more curious about the crying woman than to discovering who is the killer.
But that could be only me preferring horror to mystery as a genre.
Caught up with my medium reading finally! Have only been glancing at others’ comments as I go since impressions on the book seem to be mixed so far.
I’ve been enjoying these “micro mysteries”, solving a crime with a minimum of evidence (and maybe a hint from 翡翠 to push your thinking one way or another). It’s the time in-between the clue-gathering and solving of the puzzle that I’ve been kinda meh on though; 香月 and 翡翠 are simply not interesting enough for me as characters to want to spend any non-plot-related time with them. I don’t even necessarily mind the gratuitous descriptions of how pretty 翡翠 is, but given that’s basically one of her two main character traits (the other being innocent/naive), it’s not really helping my view of her as a “real person”.
This makes me wish the author had restructured the book in some way; either make each individual case much, much shorter by cutting out the fluff, or only have 1-2 cases in the entire book so that we can dig into both the characters and mystery a little bit more. Honestly, Interlude I has been the strongest portion of this book imo, and from literally that alone the first word that comes to mind so far when I think of medium is “thriller”, even though this book is in no way supposed to be in that genre.
Anyway, long paragraphs. Haven’t really sat down to put out all my thoughts up until now, so it feels nice to get things out. I’m curious of any last-minute twists; for me personally at this moment they would have to be purely plot twists with little to do with the characters to be really effective, given how vanilla both leads are.
I liked your breakdown of thoughts, @yukitanuki; I feel like they mirror mine pretty well.
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Law and Order 
) but 翡翠 showing some positive emotion is enough to have made it all worthwile. The whole one hour of work it apparently was for him, genius that he is.
going forward
