Brouillon auto

We are staying in Japan for this week’s book review. Yes, sometimes themes appear in my reading choices without me even noticing. What makes this one interesting is its mix of contemporary settings and Japanese folklore, taking readers on a journey filled with chosen-one prophecies, powers, and both human and mythical bonds. Ready for the adventure?

Summary

Sora is the heir to the guardians of Mount Fuji. Her birthday is approaching, and she hopes to honor her family by carrying on her parents’ legacy despite her powers being much weaker than those of her peers. But that concern quickly becomes secondary when the mountain is attacked.

Outnumbered, the enemy completely destroys their defenses and captures everyone. With the help of her friend and bodyguard, the young heiress manages to escape with one mission: find the Oracle and learn how to free her people.

However, the Oracle’s answer is far from what she hoped for. Sora discovers that she was deliberately switched at birth, that she is nothing more than an ordinary human, and that she must find the true chosen one in order to save the mountain and its inhabitants.

Caught between denial and the desperate desire to save the world collapsing around her, Sora makes her way to Tokyo. Will they really succeed in their mission? What is this chosen one truly like? And more importantly, what was she actually meant to do?

Point of View

To be completely honest — and this is only my opinion as a reader — I struggled with this story. Which is unfortunate, because the world itself is rich and genuinely interesting. The reversed chosen-one trope, where the supposed heroine turns out not to be the real chosen one and must instead find the true one, felt refreshing and enjoyable. I also appreciated learning more about Japanese folklore and seeing how it was woven into everyday life.

So how did I end up struggling so much with it?

Well, it was not really the story itself that made the reading difficult, but rather the writing style. I cannot say for certain whether this comes from the author or the translation (I read the french version), but I had a major issue with the chosen narrative tense as well as with the constant repetition.

The story is told in the past tense with a first-person narrator, despite being set in a contemporary world, and it makes the reading experience feel heavy — very heavy at times. I probably could have overlooked that if the repetitions had not been so frequent. Seeing the same word appear nearly fifteen times within less than two pages is… a lot.

I understand the need to explain magical elements — after all, not everyone is familiar with Asian fantasy or Japanese folklore. However, if I already understand by chapter two which magical element the heroine uses, I do not necessarily need the story to remind me again and again all the way through chapter ten.

It regularly pulled me out of the story, and I even considered giving up on the book entirely. In the end, though, I kept reading little by little. I honestly do not know whether I simply got used to the writing style or whether it improved later on, but I eventually reached the end of the novel, and I am glad that I did.

Conclusion

So, did I enjoy this book? As I said before, the story itself has a lot to offer, but the writing style made the reading experience rather difficult for me for a large portion of the novel. I have not read any other books by this author yet, but if I do in the future, I will probably have a better idea of whether this is truly representative of her writing style.

Mount Fuji cookie, best served chilled.