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(4.19/5)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 authors, as they spend a week on 角島, an abandoned island, in a decagon-shaped house and deal with the deaths that start occurring there. The other side we follow is on the mainland where two other members of that same mystery society receive threatening notes in the mail claiming vengeance for a murder that happened almost a year ago.
Viewpoint chapters alternate between the island and the mainland, as well as between different characters within a chapter as well. Despite this, I never had any issues switching viewpoints or understanding who's eyes we were currently looking through; the writing is clear, and the vocab isn't super specialized, aside from isolated conversations about specific types of poison, Buddhism, and Japanese puns/riddles. Grammar had a few higher-level (N2-ish) appearances.
One thing to note is that the prologue is demonstrably more difficult than the rest of the book; if you read it and struggle, I would recommend reading through the first chapter or so to get a better idea of the book's difficulty.
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 without the cultural significance it's an enjoyable read and the ending I felt was overall satisfying although perhaps not as tidy as I may have liked.
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 is a great book to read for advanced readers.
(Note: N1 vocabulary and kanji doesn't mean this is a "difficult" book to read, just that it has advanced vocabulary.)