[DeepL Translation - needs review] Kirihito, a boy born and raised in a village of blacksmiths, is ordered by the royal court to serve Matsurika, the "Sorceress of the High Tower," who lives in the oldest library in history. She is feared as a "witch" because of her ability to peruse ancient and modern books and manipulate numerous languages to devise schemes, but she is a young girl without a voice of her own. This is the beginning of the fourth volume of this cross-world fantasy!
(Translator: DeepL)
Part 1 out of 4 of the book 図書館の魔女
First of all, bear in mind that 図書館の魔女 is a book with 1000以上 pages, divided into either 2 tankobon volumes or 4 bunkobon volumes. In this case, this is the first bunkobon volume, which contains almost exclusively the prologue of the story.
With that said, I won't speak at this point about the book itself, because, well, it's just the prologue. But so far it's really good. What I do want to say is "Caution!" This is not an easy book, certainly not even for natives.
The author is a linguist fluent in Japanese, French, English, Latin, Greek and so on, so he uses very refined words with interesting furigana (mostly in latin, greek and french), and speaks carefreely about topics that, although I have an interest in them, are certainly alien to most readers (phonemics, dactylic caesurae, etc). I have a list of around 500 words taken from this book, and all look more or less like this:
杣道、脚絆、鉄鉧、 象嵌、爾後、犂耕。。。
Don't let this hold you back from reading it, though. It's going great. See you when I read the next part.