Inhae's blog

I’m finally back on track with reading! I finished three books this month, all in Chinese. One novel, one collection of linked short stories and one manga.

網內人 by  陳浩基 (Chan Ho-kei) – Hong Kong

This book has been translated into English (Second Sister by Jeremy Tiang) and has a ton of excellent reviews on multiple platforms, but I really disliked it. The reason why I continued reading is because I was trying to get back into reading after a long break, and I was afraid that giving up this novel would feel like a failure and I would never be able to get out of my reading lethargy.

I just don’t understand how this novel can have so many five star ratings, and yes I know that Chan Ho-kei is the author of 13.67, but this novel was a real disappointment. The setting and themes are interesting (cyber-bullying and suicide, how teenagers can be very isolated very quickly), and the main storyline sounded promising: when her younger sister, Xiao Wen, commits suicide after being bullied and accused by a stranger online, A Yi wants to know who was responsible. She asks for A Nie’s help, a hacker detective who seems to be the only one who can help her. (I’m sorry I’m writing all the names of characters in pinyin, but it’s just easier to me, and at least I won’t make mistakes when transcribing them. That’s also how I read them, so I’m used to this pronunciation.)

But the plot, while nice, is not exactly novel nor original, and everything was a bit underwhelming. There were a lot of parts that were there because the author wanted to talk about these topics, not because they served the plot, which made the novel feel unnecessarily long. But what really put me off are the two main characters A Yi and A Nie and their dynamic.

Obviously, with all the five star ratings this book has, people have enjoyed it very much overall. I always feel so weird not liking super popular novels like this one, but eh, that’s how I felt. I wrote about what bugged me in detail at the end of this post, but just ignore it lol.

FIX by 臥斧 (Wolf Hsu) – Taiwan

Now this book was incredible, one of the best books I have read this year, if not the best. It’s a collection of linked short story (the last chapter links them all together), that all share the same pattern: an author of mystery novels or similar genres is working on a manuscript when they receive a message from a mysterious reader who points out things that are wrong in the writer’s reasoning or understanding of their own plot.

In other words, it is shown that writers do not always understand their own plot, do not interpret their own clues correctly, and they might end up turning an innocent character into the culprit!

Even though they share a similar pattern, every short story felt very unique, we meet all kinds of writers, some being amateurs, some already famous, and their lives are interesting too. As for the fictions they wrote, they were all very entertaining, and the need to chase for clues and find the real culprit made for really good mysteries.

I really liked the idea that, once created, the story kind of exists for themselves. How the story develops is decided by the characters that are in it rather than the author. The choices they make and their actions are what will decide how the story unfolds, but sometimes the author will force a plot twist on them, ignoring the characters’ natural disposition and personality to impose their view of the plot. There are interesting thoughts about writing (especially genre fiction), and I took a lot of notes while reading this book!

I loved the idea that authors are responsible for the characters they created and knowing that they might throw and innocent in prison is bone-chilling. But then I learnt in the afterword that every short story was inspired by a real case of false conviction, which gives even more weight to each of them.

不可知論偵探1：捨身羅漢篇 by 薛西斯 (Xerses/author) and 鸚鵡洲 (Parrot/manga artist) – Taiwan

It’s the first time I’m reading a manga in Chinese! I absolutely loved this one, it’s a crime mystery with lovable character, a very good setting and it’s very suspenseful.

Hai Linzi is a Taoist priest with a very mysterious past who likes raising virtual pets in mobile games. He helps young police officer Wu Shuang from the local police station to solve a murder case involving religious elements. It seems that the victims are part of an ancient ritual that involves human sacrifice.

I loved how the case gets more and more complex as the story progresses, and the involvement of homeless persons as well as Wu Shuang’s relations to them was very interesting.

This manga left me wanting to know more about Hai Linzi, so I’m looking forward to read volume 2!

I’m very proud of me for reading three books in Chinese this month! The three of them felt very easy to read, I think I passed a milestone.

What didn’t go well at all in June was Anki… I skipped so many days 😱 and just as I was back on track from my break… 😭

My goal for July is to prioritise Anki. First work on my reviews, and then add new words. I haven’t added new words for the longest time. Then I’ll probably continue reading in Chinese, because that’s what I enjoyed the most at the moment.

Things that I disliked in 網內人 by Chan Ho-kei:

The first problem to me was entirely my fault: I didn’t know this would be a “genius detective” kind of novel. It’s a genre I tend to dislike in contemporary fiction, except if it’s done cleverly or if it’s humorous. If I had known A Nie would be this kind of detective, I probably would not have chosen this book. But the problem is that we’re not talking about genius detective anymore when it comes to this novel: A Nie straight belongs to the category of super hero. It’s not that his deduction skills are impressive, it’s more the financial resources and his ability to mobilise high tech materials in a very short time. It’s also everything he is able to do without getting tired. I kept rolling my eyes, because so many scenes didn’t feel credible, and it kind of parted from the seriousness of the main topics.

But the real problem was A Yi. She is made slow and ignorant so that A Nie can explain things to her (from technical things about internet and hacking to simple reasoning or even common sense things about the investigation). I can understand the need to make a character more ignorant to serve as pretext for the author to explain difficult or specialised things to the reader (so for example, when A Nie explains what an IP address is to A Yi, it’s basically the author explaining to the reader to make sure we will follow the reasoning), but it’s so exaggerated in this novel, it was just painful to read.

The problem is that A Yi’s ignorance goes far beyond being completely foreign to anything related to the internet. She is just dense, her obtuseness is so vast it made me want to throw my e-reader out of the window every time she opened her mouth. And it was NOT a novel about a young woman with a simple mind who suddenly finds herself navigating a world that is completely foreign to her, but who will eventually detach herself from what holds her back and fight for the truth with her limited means or whatever. It was a novel about how great and how godlike A Nie is. Almost everything A Yi says is just a button that triggers A Nie’s explanations: “how? why? what? who? I don’t understand…” This is all she has to say, and giving her a more intense and emotional scene towards the end didn’t make up for her complete lack of personality throughout the novel.

And even after A Nie’s detailed yet simple to understand explanations, the narrator would still go “A Yi didn’t understand what A Nie said”. Why? What was the need to make her unable to understand simple things…

Again, this is not a novel about A Yi, there’s no character development at all, she doesn’t change, she doesn’t have inner thoughts, she almost doesn’t have any feelings. It could have been interesting to show a character who is lacking basic knowledge and does not have any reasoning skills or is very slow at understanding situations, and then show how they still try to uncover the truth and participate in an investigation. But it’s not that at all, A Yi’s ignorance and lack of intelligence are only there to make A Nie shine by contrast. I just can’t understand why the author went so far in portraying this character like that. If at least she was a nice person who had other qualities, but she doesn’t have any charisma, she tends to overreact, which is so annoying, and she can be quite aggressive in her way of speaking too. So there’s really nothing that saves the character.

To make things worse, A Nie never tells her what the plan is, what he is up to, or even what they are going to do, even when she is going to play a role in the next step of the investigation. Given that she won’t be able to understand things that are obvious, she’s bound to make a mistake, so A Nie can then criticise her, call her stupid and insult her. She’s constantly put in situations where she can and will make a full display of her lack of understanding or even act completely hysterical. But these scenes could have been easily avoided if only A Nie had talked to her beforehand. It happens again and again in the novel. It was so painful to read. Why so much harassment against this character?

You could argue that the novel follows the Holmes/Watson pattern, so it’s normal that the detective does not reveal his plan, so that we, the ignorant reader and the clueless Watson, can be in awe once the truth is revealed and we learn about the great detective’s methods. For this to work though, the reader has to identify with the clueless character, so we can have a “aha!” moment when listening to the detective’s explanations.

But here, it is impossible to identify with A Yi. Any reader, especially a reader of crime fiction, would always be miles ahead of her. Not only that, but the novel is written in such a way that the reader has a good insight into A Nie’s methods. It’s easy to know what A Nie is up to, because the novel is not very subtle in hiding it. So when things happen, we already know that it is set up by A Nie, and we know A Nie’s intentions when leading a conversation, but at least these parts are interesting to read. But then we have to go through the parts where A Yi just does not understand at all what is going on. If she makes a mistake, we’ll have to go through the parts where A Nie insults her and calls her stupid. And then we’ll have the parts where she asks “how” and “why” and we’ll have A Nie’ explanations, which feels very repetitive because the reader already knew all that.

And another thing which might be even more problematic is that A Yi does not display any emotions (except at the end), she just seems to be an empty envelop. She says she wants to find the culprit, but that’s all she says. She does not even know what to do once she finds them. And the novel does not show many flashbacks about Xiao Wen and A Yi, we don’t know much about their relationship, there’s no love or warmth that I could feel, it felt so artificial. She wants to find the truth because Xiao Wen was her sister, but it’s not motivated by anything beyond than that. So in the end, I couldn’t care less about what really happened to Xiao Wen, because the novel didn’t make me care at all for these two sisters.

I really cannot understand what was the author’s intention? Did Chan Ho-kei really think the reader would be on the same level as A Yi? Could he really underestimate the reader’s capabilities to that extent? I can’t believe it. Then what was the point? Just make A Nie appear more godlike than he really is. But a character should be impressive for their deeds or personality, not because they are paired with a character whose role is to make them shine. And anyway, A Nie’s attitude towards her is unbearable, he is rude to her, insults her, despises her. I had no sympathy for him at all… and then the novel showing that he has a kind heart under all those layers of rudeness, seriously? Then he really is perfect uh?

It’s the first time I’m reading a novel with a character treated this way just to make another shine by contrast.

And sure, there were a lot of good things in the novel, like a good twist in the end, but the main duo just completely ruined my enjoyment of it. I don’t understand why I seem to be the only one who was bothered by this…

About

I’m learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese to read mystery novels and play video games in these languages.

Learning languages has always been one of my favourite hobbies, but I’m not a social person, I don’t like to meet new people and make friends, this is just not me. I keep hearing that languages are meant for communication, that we have to actively use them, talk with natives, etc. and for a long time, I thought it was weird to learn languages just to read books, with zero interest in communication.

Now I don’t really care what people think, and this blog helped me a lot to stop doubting myself and just do what I enjoy doing.