Of the manga I’ve been trying lately, this is the best written and well drawn, by far. Think kids-on-bikes with a mystery component that brings the kids together in the future, when they’re grown up and their lives aren’t what they expected. The alternating timeline is well done, the first few pages have another mystery component on top of that, but isn’t returned to in this volume, and all the characters and dialogue are clearly well thought out, mapped, and executed methodically,

This comes at the price of a very granular plot, however. With the story being a very slow burn, which seems to be normal for manga. There is, of course, lots of vacillating tones, from very serious to the hyper expressions and “freaking out” faces for comedic effect. This kind of humour never works for me, but especially in something so serious, it feels particularly odd.

Still, more than enough to keep me reading. So far, the most promising of the lists of best manga I’ve sampled.

I have complex feelings about this. On one hand, the prose work is to my liking and done well, the characters are pretty organic, there are multiple, really interesting esoteric experiences from the perspectives of Nigerian immigrants in both the UK and the U.S, and it’s just easy reading, despite the length.

On the other hand, when you read something with such a nuanced portrayal of a female experience, especially around political and social thought of black people living in America versus the main characters other perspective, as a black woman in America who moved there, but it also a self avowed Terf, it boggles the mind, a bit. There is such a breadth of female experiences, to get stuck on the notion that a trans woman somehow has an entirely different experience that they aren’t “women”, it just constantly had me taken out of the fiction.

Mostly, I think it happened often because it attempts a self-identified mixture of goals, which the book breaks the fourth wall with a discussion between women saying that books written by marginalized authors are pigeon holed into books that teach the reader something, and get blasted for it, and books that are so nuanced that it’s not prescriptive and the reader takes away from it what they want, but it’s still About the same topics. That’s very true, especially with fiction produced by immigrants, even more so in Canada’s silo of publishing at the moment. But the book pointing to the fact that it’s attempting to both doesn’t actually solve the problem that that is what it’s trying to do. It is very prescriptive often, telling you about a certain topic and then having a blog post about the topic stating why you should think similarly. And then transitions back again into a fiction mostly putting together characters and situations that showcase the social and political inability to detach from “issues”, as republications call them, but are lived experiences of marginalized people.

Had it not been prescriptive it might have actually felt more organic than this end product. And then, at the end, I was constantly taken out of the fiction at these points, many of which I do agree with, to think to myself, how can someone who is being so prescriptive about these topics, still be so morally compromised and wrong about trans people? So, really, I’m sure my knowing things about the author influenced my reading of the book. And, had I not already owned it and had some friends not wanted to read it together, I would probably have never picked it up, knowing she’s a Terf.

As solid as this book is, probably 3.5-4 star read, I just don’t want to assign it any kind of value. Which is interesting to me, because I did rate the Harry Potter books, having owned them for some time, and been able to consume them with some enjoyment as with this one—but then again, those books aren’t centered around the reader taking away prescriptive conclusions about marginalized people, while the reader knows the writer believes in withholding rights to another group of marginalized people.

Made it about halfway in and then started rapidly skimming. Just massively not my thing. Narration from horny incel boys are just my kryptonite, and that precludes me from enjoying a lot of manga, let’s be real.

Not a bad start to the series. A bit more cerebral than typical and I enjoyed the series starting out with our man having to basically check his confirmation bias to get to the right conclusion, and makes it feel like an actual start. He’s not Sherlock, at least, not yet (if he’s even supposed to be). It’s a case that teaches a lesson, subverts some expectations, and is very interior and not plotty at all.

It also feels fairly antiquated in terms of pejoratives around casual racism and ideas around how men and women act and think. I’m most interested in a later book, Daughter of Time, but didn’t want to jump into a series mid go.

A little bit improved over the first, but also filled with some really antiquated prejudice around antisemitism and gypsies and such, and it’s so casual that I think Tey was just like, this is normal. It goes unchallenged and seems to spout from nearly anyone. I do like that she writes women fairly eclectically, even if the characters similarly have antiquated views on how women are, that seems more understandable from the time she’s writing in, less so the other issues. Was she trying to show the Everyman as a social commentary, casually prejudiced? If so, it seems too surface level to be pointed.

Another short and unsweet instalment. We see Patrick as a young man, basically only engaging in escapism as his father passes and he must collect the ashes. Unable to process, most of it is in a drug induced fugue state that illustrates that Patrick is Not Okay, he has some of the worst qualities of his father, and he hasn’t dealt with anything from the past. Possibly the abuse shown in book one continued a great deal more too, it’s eluded to.

Still well written, but it can really only make one point and it does so quite a lot.

My favourite so far, and not a murder, at all. Two women are accused of kidnapping a young girl who disappeared, but claims to have broken free and got to safety. I think the women are above par in complexity and the case feels pretty novel. Feels much improved over the last.

Certainly the strongest in the series so far, though interest will really be dependent on how swept away you are in the passion of our inspector on his historical subject. If it clues readers into history as a narrative, with bias from the writer playing a monumental role in deciding that history, let alone the narrative becoming the zeitgeist—so much the better. It makes for an interesting case, chasing source information, making deductions and clues. Basically, a wonderful parallel to solving an actual crime in the here and now, only one entirely of the mind.

Which, of course, has become a trope in plenty of crime fiction. Countless episodes of detective/crime shows have used this device now, but usually as a gotcha moment on the audience, discovering something about a previous case or their first case they couldn’t solve, etc. etc. you get the idea. But this still feels quite fresh to me. Probably, it’s slightly daring choosing a dry subject, but I think it is very good at appealing to a ven diagram of readers who may not necessarily otherwise be into other aspects of the novel, were others not present.

I’m a bit baffled as to why this one seems to be even better reviewed than others. I suppose when people continue with a series, generally only the people invested in it keep going, and tend to grant a lot of leeway. I think this is a clear step back.

It’s tropey, very telegraphed, very uninteresting—especially because at the start we spend so much time with a character I genuinely could not care less about—and it being antiquated doesn’t excuse how transphobic it is. Trans people are talked about like sometimes people just dress up to do crimes, or written about in fetishistic terms. It’s not good and time doesn’t excuse it, because it’s actually just bad writing. Most of all, though, after the excellent previous book, this was sinfully boring.

The prose style really propelled this along, for me. The character work was good, though all their arcs and the plot pretty much never moved away from where I expected things to go, otherwise the book would probably warrant a higher rating from me. The central tension being tension-free, yet it never being in danger of me putting it down, feels like an accomplishment, to me. World building was also believable, especially, painfully, annunciated with roe being repealed. I don’t doubt Canada would roll over like that too. Cooperating with a fascist US, sending back, at the border, anyone attempting to get in for an abortion.