- #1
As other people have pointed out, it's too early to rate the novel, but I also wanted to write my thoughts on it.The way the novel is written is confusing at best, plain "obscure" at worst, I am not familiar with the differences of the original and the translation but as selfiesturluson has said, it is a "stream of consciousness" so you are looking at the train of thought of the different POVs with minimal narration, I wasn't aware that this was a method of writing, but I guess it's more common on asian novels because I've seen this method on other works... nice to know there is an appropriate term for it, "Stream of consciousness" I'll keep that in mind.Now, the reason why I say this work is "confusing" at best, plain "obscure" at worst is because the author relies heavily on "Flashbacks", the actual start of the novel is later in the story, set in an elusive timeframe, then you get sent "back" through the power of "I remember......." then you are thrown forward a bit without reference... then you change POV and are thrown backwards again...So, you're now in charge of putting all the timelines in order, you can guess a bit of the timeframe but it's not conclusive at all, and if you haven't put attention on the occurrences you're going to miss the subtle references of what is happening between the characters involved, which is a shame because it's a clever way of doing things but I feel like the author is missing the point, he's actively using both methods for world building, but one is... abysmally horrible, it's straight up an exposition dump disguised as musings, does the guy thinking about magic really needs to think about the particulars every time it's mentioned?, I don't think so.But, if you pay too much attention to it, you'll miss the SECOND part of the worldbuilding, which are the politics and intricacies of the society they live in, I'm not talking about the relationship between characters, that's properly established, I'm talking about the "intent" behind the actions of the characters... which at first glance you can gloss over but it's obviously the main point of their interactions.How can I put it?... his focus is to throw the reader off, he is setting up a bunch of things in between the exposition dump and the interactions to be referenced later, but it feels messy... and I can't shake this feeling that it's going over the head of the author, I feel like he's patting himself on the back because he "cleverly" hid the real plot behind the exposition dump, but again, it's too early to be overly critical of this.Regardless, I'm enjoying the story, but everything is taking its sweet time to start, I feel like the setup is taking too long, so far, the MCs haven't interacted in any way (not properly), you would think that the "Stalker" part, which is supposed to be the main focus of the story would have priority, but nope, the author is just setting up a bunch of future dreads without advancing the plot one bit... and since all this is monologue after monologue, there are only two people that have being properly characterized... and one of them isn't important for the main plot, and probably never will be, he's the friend, you know, the one that exists to remind the reader MC is cool.But don't get me wrong, I really am enjoying the story, I can't wait for things to properly start, because it feels like once the author is done with the setup phase, things are going to be much more fleshed out and interesting, so far I haven't seen any "red flags"... well, only one, which is the under characterization of the MC, but since that is part of the course of JP novels, I'm not overly careful of it... as long as he doesn't end up with JP MC syndrome everything will be ok... I hope... oh dear god I beg you for it to be ok...