October 22, 2022

A good first novel

I read this as my first "text-only" novel (after 3 manga series at levels 17-21) and I feel it was a decent choice.

The story is straightforward: an apprentice Black Witch and her teacher's adventures. The book is divided into 3 segments, each dealing with a small supernatural-themed mystery. The mystery is solved at the end of the segment; one could read just the first one to gauge their interest in the book without being left hanging would they decide to drop it.

The novel contains 765 different kanji; all common, with the exception of maybe a dozen used in witchcraft-related words (one's in the title). You'll get a chance to see in use many common kanji and words you may have memorized; on the other hand this won't be very useful to someone looking to mine intermediate-level kanji or vocabulary.

The grammar is very simple, most sentences are short and easy to understand. Occasionally (maybe 1 in 15) you'll find a sentence the structure of which is harder to parse, and it is a useful exercise to spend some time analysing those more closely. It doesn't happen often enough to make the reading an unpleasant or bumpy experience. The speech style is informal, but not excessively so.

Overall, the book is a gentle stepping stone for someone looking to transition from mangas to novels. Its simple vocabulary and sentence structure let you focus on getting used to "novel language", where actions are narrated and settings described instead of being shown in drawings.

Gradings:3
0
favorite_border
on February 18, 2023
on October 22, 2022
on October 22, 2022