medium 霊媒探偵城塚翡翠

Confused by the contradictory reviews? Let me help.

If you read the review here below me or elsewhere, you will notice that some people loved the book and others hated it. This made me reluctant to read the book, but when I finally got to read it, I decided to understand what the hell is going on. The results are the following:

STRUCTURE:

• If you know about mystery tags: 本格的なミステリー　+ 　霊媒
• 4 main chapters (3 unrelated cases + 1 final big spoiler chapter)
• chapters 1-3 are almost unanimously agreed to be mid tier in terms of mystery novels.
• chapter 4 is with no doubt the best.

READING SENSATION (mostly agreed by all readers):

• chapter 1: おもしろいけど、普通。
• chapter 2: おもしろいけど、 女の子たちの描写は気持ち悪いというか。。。
• chapter 3: 犯人はわかっているし、早く終わってほしい。
• chapter 4: え?!

WHY SO MANY DIFFERENT REVIEWS: The first 3 chapters are the main reason for the disparity in the reviews. Some people find them interesting enough to continue reading. Others get bored too soon, and either drop the book or read to the end. The end is very interesting, but if you have been suffering to reach it 300以上 pages, then it will not change your impression of the book too much. Personally, I find them interesting enough, but I could not avoid sometimes reading other things.

MOST NOTED PROBLEMS:

• The main characters behavior is not liked by everybody. Because speaking about the characters is related to spoilers, people do not speak much about it in the reviews, but we can summarize them as 香月 being a bit apathetic (and sometimes creepy), while 翡翠 acting too girly, if your know what I mean.

• 翡翠 gets described too much, and the descriptions are always the same.

ABOUT THE BIG SPOILER (explained without spoilers):

• Impossible to guess (though I guessed it).
• Explains every weak aspect of the book, of the mysteries, and generally justifies everything to make the book a much, much better book.
• Actually a double spoiler. The first one was easy to guess for me, and is actually not impossible due to the clues throughout the book (weak spoiler: actually, the book being in 3rd person is suspicious enough ). The second one is impossible because there are simply no clues given, though I never abandoned the idea that it could very well be the case.

RATING:

The first three chapters get 3★, and the fourth chapter gets 5★. This does not change the 3★ rating for me, but I give an extra star ★ because the author used consistently the 魘 kanji in 魘される, which is my favorite kanji, one time without furigana. That's the way!