Reviews
(4/5)Associative Horror
Ups the ante of 6 by partially merging horror with activity books. The prose chapters are once again beautifully written and highly enjoyable, while the gimmick chapters explore new ways to tell horror stories and very much succeed in that, in my opinion. Be warned, though, that the literary and sometimes even archaic writing style of the book makes it very difficult at times, so much so that it gave even some native speakers a headache.
Still, for the most part I found it to competently walk the line between needlessly verbose and thrillingly immersive, with one or two chapters being very obviously stretched out to reach a full novel length (though for this price I'm not exactly complaining). Nashi has a way with words that's especially effective when describing environments and mood, and there is a thread of sweaty, twisted disgust running through the whole book that should be delightful to any horror fan.
If you work through the crossword chapter, for example, or even better work through with a friend, it becomes a captivating experience that unveils its horror in ways that simply aren't possible for linear narratives. I had a lot of fun with "finding" the horror here myself and can recommend it to anyone who is interested in more experimental forms of storytelling and spinning tales off of a prompt as simple as "box".
The math problems and the crossword chapter were really fun
It's difficult to evaluate this book because it was definitely above my reading level, which made the prose really hard to get through at times.
Chapters 1-3 were my favorites of the prose chapters, though none of them really blew me away.
Chapter 4, 練習問題, was my favorite chapter overall! I did the math problems with a friend and we genuinely attempted to work through them, and it ended up being a whole lot of fun and really helped build suspense in the story. It took us about 80 minutes to finish the chapter.
Chapter 5, 京都府北部で発見されたタイムカプセル, was the hardest chapter by far, and a real slog at times, though I did (with a bit of research) eventually manage to figure out what this story was actually about, despite my overall low comprehension.
Chapter 6, 穴埋め作業, was my other favorite chapter! The crosswords were a bit hard for me at my current level of language ability, but doing them with a friend made them more achievable, and the two of us did pretty well, actually! We had planned to stop part of the way through the chapter, but got too absorbed in it and ended up spending three straight hours working through it. This chapter also has my favorite reveal in the entire book.
Chapter 7, 虹色の水疱瘡、或いは廃墟で痙攣する ケロイドが見た夢の中の風景, was hard to get through because it was a bit difficult and also pretty gross...
Chapter 8, 箱庭, gets a bit metaphysical, which I found difficult, though the prose itself was simpler than most of the other chapters.
Overall, I'd rate the prose chapters (chapters 1-3, 5, 7-8) around 3/5. I enjoyed them well enough for what they were, but doubt I'll feel a need to revisit them.
The puzzle chapters (chapters 4 and 6), though, were incredible, and I had a whole lot of fun with them! A very out of the box (🤭) way to tell a horror story. Those two were 5/5 to me.
So I averaged that out to 4 stars for the book as a whole.
You might enjoy this one if you like more experimental storytelling and a creative take on a theme. I feel like it played with expectations in some fun ways, though the creativity shone a lot more in the puzzle chapters than in the prose ones.