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(4.18/5)A murder mystery styled after "And Then There Were None"
This book opens with someone staring out to sea, thinking about the fact that they're going to enact "judgement" on a group of people. Those who've read Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" will immediately see the parallels, though reading Christie's book isn't a prerequisite for reading this one.
Our tale follows, on one side, a group of seven university students, all members of a mystery book aficionado society, who are all referred to by nicknames referencing great Western mystery
I echo eefara's sentiments about the prologue being much harder than the rest of the book. There are scattered bubbles of hard vocabulary, but the bulk of the book is not difficult to follow and has pretty standard writing.
I enjoyed the characterizations and I could see how this book influenced the modern Japanese mystery genre. If you're a fan of mystery I recommend picking this up, if for no other reason than to catch the references to it. This book does stand on its own however and so even
One of The Best Japanese Novels Ever
This book was recommended to me by a number of Japanese friends but it was sitting on my to-read pile for a while until it was voted at Natively's mystery book club book.
I have to say it's one of the best Japanese novels I've ever read. Too many novels take forever to get anywhere but this was intriguing right from the start with many twists and turns that has me captivated all the way through.
If you want to practice your N1 Japanese vocab and kanji, and learn some old unused kanji then this