Inhae's blog

개구리 정원의 살인 by 황정은. (Kr)

Some years ago I started and DNFed halfway through another book by this author, 살인 오마카세. As I recall it, the book was really good, it’s a shame I did not finish it… but at some point I found that the story became repetitive, and I was probably not in a reading mood at the time.

With 개구리 정원의 살인, I had the same feeling. The novel started really strong and the first half was so so good: a murder story that will let us explore the relations between the inhabitants of an apartment complex for rich people. It’s exactly the kind of story I like, focused on the motive and the psychology of the characters involved, or how a triggering event will lead ordinary people to contemplate the idea of murder. In this story, the triggering event is an actor, whose career is on stand-by, but who is still very popular among housewives, and his arrival in the apartment complex.

The police investigation is sober and realistic, the kind that I enjoy reading. The police detective is the same as in 살인 오마카세, but none of the books are advertised as a series, which I find a bit weird but oh well.

What prevents me from ranking this book among my favourites is that it does get a little bit repetitive. We get the point of view of the characters involved and the police, which is classic for this kind of stories, but I felt that it overlaid a bit too much, if it makes sense? The end felt also a bit underwhelming and repetitive, and I felt that, after some point, we stop learning anything new anymore despite going over the same things several times.

Still, it was a really enjoyable read!

殺人是件嚴肅的事 by 馬卡 (Tw)

Another very good police crime novel that I enjoyed very much. But first of all, I should say that the themes are very dark, the victim is a child and the novel touches upon paedophilia, so I would not recommend this book to everyone.

I loved the police investigation and the repercussions that the murder has on the families (from the victim and the aggressor), I found this so well described, it was suffocating at times. This reminded me of the collection of short stories 關於殺人這件事……請勿對號入座, another book I read by this author and that I loved very much.

One thing that bothered me a little is that the novel talks about paedophilia, but does not adresses it completely (for example, a character says something I found very shocking, but even though her interlocutor does not agree with her, the novel then moves on, and I felt that this question should have been more thoroughly discussed, and this character’s view refuted more aggressively). Maybe it’s just me, but some parts like this one made me ill at ease, and I wish that the author had either not chosen this as a topic, or tackled the issue more thoroughly.

And finally, I didn’t really like the end, there are one or two things I didn’t find very credible, and the motive felt weak.

I did like this novel for the most part, and I always enjoy reading police procedurals, but I much preferred 關於殺人這件事……請勿對號入座.

十戒 by 夕木春央 (Jp)

I read this book because I really loved 方舟 by the same author. The two books have a very similar structure, but I would say that 十戒 is weaker than 方舟 in everything. We have the classic closed circle setting on an island with a group of people (most of them didn’t know each other beforehand) and murders happening.

I found the reveal very good, but not as mind-blowing as 方舟. The end of 方舟 was so excellent, a lot of novels have final plot twists, but the end of 方舟 really completely changes the whole story, it’s one of the best twists I ever read. 十戒 was just a good reveal, not an incredible one, and that’s okay.

The real problem to me was the rest, the three days the characters spend on the island… and the core of the novel. I found it very empty? It was not boring per se, but it lacked substance and tension. One big issue for me is that we never really get to know the characters. It’s a first-person narrative and, for plot reasons, the characters would not talk to each others very much, so we only really know our protagonist and one other character (and even then, I wouldn’t say that I felt close to them). Moreover, when a victim is found, no one seems to care, like the deaths do not affect the characters at all.

I felt a strong disconnect with everything that happens in the story, but the novel reads very easily, so it was still enjoyable.

流星·蝴蝶·剑 (上下) by 古龙 (Tw)

Finally, my first wuxia novel and by far my favourite book of the month! I’m so grateful to the person who recommend Gu Long to me. This novel was so easy to read, I was bracing myself for complex historical and cultural references, long descriptions, a classic prose that would be hard to read for language learners, and descriptions of combat using technical vocabulary.

But there was none of that! The combat scenes for example were very short and very fast, but every time the tension was extremely high. The focus of every confrontation was more psychological, it was about what it meant for these characters to be facing each other, it was about their choices and their sense of loyalty.

I really loved the characters in this novel. I guess that Meng Xinghun is supposed to be the protagonist? But I found other characters like Sun Yubo or Lü Xiangchuan to be actually more interesting and fascinating than Meng Xinghun, and Ye Xiang is probably my favourite character in the whole novel. I liked that they are not perfect, and the fact that every character is so unique and well portrayed makes the plot even more gripping, because I ended up rooting for different characters even if they had conflicting goals.

The plot was also extremely suspenseful, and the pace very fast, I could not put the book down. Maybe it’s because I never read wuxia before, and very rarely read fantasy in general, so I might be easily impressed? but yeah, I was constantly taken aback by plot twists and reveals, it was such an exciting read! I loved all the topics present in the story too: revenge and honour, loyalty and treason, friendship and loneliness…

There are not a lot of female characters, but I found that they all had an interesting personality and played important roles, though I must say that a lot of opinions on women were painful to read.