This is the second book I've read in the past week, as mentioned here. As with Beyhude, I have conflicting feelings about it, so let's talk.

Strange Covers

Strange Houses by Uketsu caught my eye at an airport bookshop. It's somewhat of a ritual for me to buy a book at the airport if I'm to board a plane for longer than two hours. Of course, as always, I go for something I've never heard of before with a cover that catches my eye, since I usually don't have the time to sit and read the back covers of dozens of books at an airport. I've found some of my favorite books this way, and I was ready for another added to that particular list.

The pastel blue and hot neon pink cover did in fact catch my eye quite well, and the almost maximalist placement of images and text on top of the floor plan present therein intrigued me. After reading through it (I couldn't manage to during the trip this time), I am quite conflicted on it. I love the premise, but the execution leaves much to be desired. The book advertises itself as a "chilling Japanese mystery sensation", and I can attest that it is, in fact, Japanese.

Before we move onto the contents of the book, I will say this: Even though I'll try not to spoil anything, proceed with caution. If you'd like to read this book, read it first before the discussion. It's not a long read, nor a particularly complex one.

Strange Choices

The book opens up with our protagonist, Uketsu, receiving the floor plan of a house in Tokyo from his friends, who are thinking of buying it and are asking for input on the matter. They notice a strange, inaccessible dead space in the floor plan of the house, inside the kitchen area, and since Uketsu "knows about weird things", they decide to ask him his opinions.

This, I have to say, is quite the opener for me, leaving aside the strangeness of asking your author friend for his input on an architectural quirk, of course. It signals that the mystery, whatever it is, will require the reader's participation to solve in the form of examining floor plans, comparing them with the knowns and trying to deduce the unknowns.

Uketsu, being the more sensible of the two parties, decides to ask an actual architect about the floor plan, and the mystery then deepens, or at least I wish it did. Instead, we get to see this book for what it actually is, a murder mystery without murder or mystery. Our now protagonists, Uketsu and his architect friend Kurihara, both individually possess the deductive abilities of Sherlock Holmes, Batman and Phoenix Wright combined. By page thirty-one, they deduce the entire mystery of the house, and partially the entire book just by looking at the floor plan and coming up with hypotheticals no one in their right mind would ever conceive of. The two friends, just by eyeing two pages of floor plans, deduce that there must have been murderers living in this house, with the most outlandish method of killing. I figured this would later turn out to be completely false, to deepen the mystery and force the protagonists to actually investigate, however in the very next chapter all of their "suspicions" are proven true, somewhat.

Even though this made me raise an eyebrow, I kept reading. The book, which earlier teased a participatory mystery, proceeded to solve the whole thing by itself, and then present the clues to me alongside the solution. The theories which the characters come up with, which then are revealed to be true, are so egregious that even if the clues were given earlier, it would be impossible to deduce anything anyway. A good mystery intrigues the reader, and by the end it makes them feel satisfied with a clever resolution, maybe a twist or two thrown in here and there to keep things interesting. Strange Houses, on the contrary, left me confused with these choices.

At some point Uketsu does decide to do some detective work by going to the house himself and having a look, however we are again cut short by a neighbor dumping exposition and confirming his suspicions. This sort of literary blue-balling was truly something I didn't expect. And it almost feels like the author didn't expect it either, because there's only so much you can deduce from floor plans alone (even if the book pushes that line beyond its elastic limit) and without any kind of detective work, the ending of the book takes the form of the only option left; a new character appearing out of nowhere explaining the entire mystery to complete strangers even though realistically this could only be to their detriment.

Strange Translations

Or is it? Have you ever read, watched or listened to fan-translated Japanese works, may they be manga, anime or novels, and while the translation was grammatically "correct", there's something in the language that feels "off"? Maybe the dialogue doesn't sound natural, or some otherwise uncommon word is used 5 times in one page etc.? Strange Houses reads just like that. Honestly it was somewhat nostalgic, it took me back to my days of reading scanlated manga (godspeed to all scanlators, by the way), but at the same time it was another point towards my "Just why?" pile.

It's definitely possible to translate Japanese into something that sounds natural, even flowery if need be, in English. And I definitely wouldn't want to throw shade at the translator, especially after reading through their blog, which raises some of the same concerns in the linked post and some others as I have here, albeit in a much kinder way. Thus I can only assume this is the author's style.

I must admit I've never even considered this possibility before Strange Houses, as my introduction to this style of writing was all fan translated works and I just wrote it up to shoddy translation. That's why seeing it in print whiplashed me in a way. I can't say I'm not excited to look deeper into this.

Strange Feelings

Overall, this book, much like the one mentioned in the previous post, left me in conflicted feelings. On one hand, I love the concept, I love the outlandish methods of murder and I love a participatory mystery. On the other, I hate the execution, and the exposition. There are two more books in the same style by the author, one of which the translator calls "Uketsu's best work" in his blog. I think I'll just have to read those myself and see, because there's a nugget of gold in here, and I hope the author can dig it out.