ウェイプスウィード ヨルの惑星

Quick summary: In the far future most of humanity lives in orbital colonies and Earth is off-limits. A researcher Kengasen crash-lands in the ocean and is rescued by Yoru, a child miko who handles the diplomatic and religious needs of the community of fairly primitive people living on an island. In the ocean is a living plant/fungus thing that is rumoured to be sentient. It's essentially a first-contact type story. This may look like a light novel - it even has some (very good) illustrations inside, but it's basically just a straight-up science fiction novel.

On one hand, I really didn't enjoy it that much. It felt disjointed, didn't really hit any emotional beats, and overall just didn't feel satisfying. On the other - I don't think it's a bad book, necessarily. It's nice and clearly written, I like the characters, the setting is interesting.

The reason it felt disjointed was pretty obvious, but only after turning the last page and seeing that the first two sections were published separately in a science fiction magazine. It's basically three novellas stitched together. It's also possible that I'm just missing something, because it does feel that some plot points just don't follow from some others. Overall though, it just feels like some interesting plot points just disappear from the story - yes, the swamp stuff is interesting ... but so was Yoru's island home with the knowledge temple, or the school she was sent to after that. Every time you start getting a look into some interesting bit of the world - it's gone and replaced with something else. This probably won't bother everyone, but it broke my investment in the story.

Another probably unfair complaint I have is: The author chose the wrong viewpoint character. There are two small scenes where Yoru is the viewpoint character - otherwise it's entirely told from Kengasen's PoV. Now, Kengasen is a perfectly good character - as a scholar from the Jupiter colony, he has a fair bit of perspective on Earth-colony politics and such. But Yoru is just ... obviously more interesting? She's the one with strong motivations and an emotional connection in the first story, in the second and third stories she's the one doing all the diplomatic heavy-lifting, and the most important stuff is all going on inside her head. Kengasen has very little emotional attachment to any of it - mostly, he's just doing his job.

Having the dispassionate observer as the viewpoint is, again, fine. It's a valid narrative choice, I guess. But it's just another thing that feels like it could have made things a lot more gripping. Kengasen is very good at dropping a whole lot of exposition - and I don't mind it too much because his character voice is interesting enough, but it feels like a lost opportunity.

Anyway, giving this a two-star "it-was-okay" rating. I wouldn't dissuade anyone from reading this if this if they're hanging out for readable science fiction and find the general concept interesting, but I find it hard to recommend.

Difficulty-wise, it's alright. The writing style is clear, furigana is minimal, and there's not a lot of really difficult words or tangled description. That said, it's still a science fiction novel, with lots of technical or uncommon terms, with quite a bit of biology and politics.