Reviews and Comments

This entire book suffers from one of the things I hate the most about detective fiction: cops. It's not that the protagonist works with the cops because the protagonist is a cop. He's the Chief Inspector of the Shanghai Police, and he works within the Communist Party of China.

Despite that, the story was initially interesting. The confused exploration around Chairman Mao (as the book was "for those who had been harmed by Mao") was also interesting as an idea... Especially as there are two separate but intertwined mysteries that are presented: one related to Chairman Mao and one related to Jiao, who is the fictional granddaughter of a fictional actress who was one of Mao's mistresses. She supposedly, according to a minister in Beijing, has "Mao material" that has enabled her to improve her life from that of a humble secretary to a rich young woman. I liked this premise because it did initially highlight the paranoia of having to maintain the image of someone like Mao (something that has been done), and it really could've been an engaging story to explore both the harms of Mao (something this book claimed it would do) and the mystery around Jiao.

However, the author basically throws away in the final two chapters when he grabs for an absurd ableist trope (multiple personality disorder) along with a terrible explanation that does incredibly little to settle anything with regards to either the mystery about Jiao (which also includes two subsequent murders) and does absolutely nothing to settle the exploration around Mao. The cop acts as a cop would (including doing nothing while a woman is being murdered except hide in the closet), and he does nothing to even really consider his place in the system that he's been quasi-questioning throughout the exploration.

On top of the terrible editing (and it is among one of the worst books I've read), it's a work that is so engaging only to slap the audience in the face with the most stereotypical of "twists" and a failure to do whatever it claimed it set out to do.

This entire book suffers from one of the things I hate the most about detective fiction: cops. It's not that the protagonist works with the cops because the protagonist is a cop. He's the Chief Inspector of the Shanghai Police, and he works within the Communist Party of China.

Despite that, the story was initially interesting. The confused exploration around Chairman Mao (as the book was "for those who had been harmed by Mao") was also interesting as an idea... Especially as there are two separate but intertwined mysteries that are presented: one related to Chairman Mao and one related to Jiao, who is the fictional granddaughter of a fictional actress who was one of Mao's mistresses. She supposedly, according to a minister in Beijing, has "Mao material" that has enabled her to improve her life from that of a humble secretary to a rich young woman. I liked this premise because it did initially highlight the paranoia of having to maintain the image of someone like Mao (something that has been done), and it really could've been an engaging story to explore both the harms of Mao (something this book claimed it would do) and the mystery around Jiao.

However, the author basically throws away in the final two chapters when he grabs for an absurd ableist trope (multiple personality disorder) along with a terrible explanation that does incredibly little to settle anything with regards to either the mystery about Jiao (which also includes two subsequent murders) and does absolutely nothing to settle the exploration around Mao. The cop acts as a cop would (including doing nothing while a woman is being murdered except hide in the closet), and he does nothing to even really consider his place in the system that he's been quasi-questioning throughout the exploration.

On top of the terrible editing (and it is among one of the worst books I've read), it's a work that is so engaging only to slap the audience in the face with the most stereotypical of "twists" and a failure to do whatever it claimed it set out to do.

My first thought is that the person who was thanked for editorial ability really shouldn't have been because they... simply didn't catch things that would improve readability in at least a section of about ten pages (e.g., using 'lead' as the past tense instead of 'led' because of homophones, dropped articles which disrupt the flow of reading, weirdly used commas that create strange lists when it's not supposed to be one, missing plurals...). I would not have thanked him because he did not do his job well and appears to have randomly skipped large sections, as if he read three pages and was like "Yeah, these three pages had minimal problems" and made that assumption for later sections.

ANYWAY, the poor editing aside (which really is a me-issue in terms of flow because of how I learned to read with dyslexia), it doesn't detract from the story. The story is succeeding in making me want to learn more about Mao (the person) because... holy shit. The things being discussed are just... unsurprising, but I've never looked into them.

To be fair, the book's acknowledgement says that it is 'for those who suffered under Mao'.

I genuinely enjoy Yokomizo's novels. Even in translation, they are well done and engaging. It's hard to not applaud that.

The thing I liked about this one, even with the detective of Kindaichi Kosuke being part of it, is that it was less from his perspective (or involved him less) while still making it clear that he was an important part of the story. He was solving the many crimes alongside the protagonist, who wasn't entirely setting out to solve the crime (as he recounts).

I also really liked that this is written in such a way that it's like a mystery memoir from the perspective of one of the suspects. Being from his perspective, it creates a lot of chaos about who you trust and who you don't. This makes it a bit more interesting because you're trying to empathise with him while also scrutinising him and what he sees or how he understood something. I really like that because it's a great way to kind of hide the solution, and it's so simple once you start unravelling who really committed the murders.

I'm going to start from this premise: If they had properly marketed this book as a sci-fi thriller or an action sci-fi or something, I probably would have fewer problems with it. I probably wouldn't have spent 300+ pages trying to keep track of clues (that didn't exist) so that I could solve a mystery (that wasn't really there); I would've just gone with the flow, as I did for the remainder of the book. It got better (not good) once I did that, but the marketing was literally the worst part because it established incorrect assumptions and expectations. They told me it was a sci-fi mystery/detective novel... I literally got zero of one of those genres, despite all claims to the contrary (by people who I'm guessing didn't even read the book or have no concept of what makes a mystery).

Beyond that, while it would've been a more tolerable read had they actually tried to set expectations in a better way, it still wasn't good. So much of it is peak white liberal woman writing diversity, not knowing shit about anyone or anything. The aliens are treated very similarly to how we (predominantly but not limited to English-speakers) treat East Asians with regards to their names; I seriously couldn't get that out of my head, especially as the explanation for why there are aliens named Tina, Ferdinand, Stephanie, Algernon and the like... is because it's the "closest approximation in our language" (or some similar rubbish). And all the random social justice throws? A psychiatrist telling a patient off for using the word crazy because it's ableist, the weird handling of race and poking at racist characters (with the single Korean character needing a non-Korean man to tell her what is part of Korean culture because she's "so disconnected")... It kept happening in so many ways that I had to roll my eyes at how White Liberal Lady this book genuinely is.

Along with that, there is very little creativity in the handling of non-human species, even when they are vaguely interesting. The Sundry are a hivemind (but they still act like humans despite being a bunch of insect-like sentients); the Gneiss are rock people (who are still more culturally like humans despite... being fucking rock people). The qualities that make aliens... alien? Aren't really there and are... quite superficial. There's very little deviation based on perspective.

The other thing that ruins this book is the timeline. The timeline is atrocious and difficult to follow, which I'm guessing is how so many people wrongly categorised this as "mystery." A book being obtuse for no real reason and difficult to follow does not... make it a mystery. It makes it annoying. So many chapters could've been pulled from where they were and re-slotted somewhere else to make things coherent, especially when it was never clear what time or place you were in until you were at least half a page into a chapter. Or section, actually! Sometimes the middle of chapters just would suddenly jump without any indication anywhere of what was going on.

My final gripe is with the number of references to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I have no problem with references, but these were at one point so excessive and frequent that it really just felt like "Did you get it? Did you? Did you see it? Get that one? What about that one?!" I wanted to scream because it honestly just made me angry at how many there were. I'm fine with references when they're utilised well, but this was just the equivalent of smashing me in the face with a brick for at least the first half of the book. Annoying as hell.

I wouldn't recommend this, and I have zero desire to read anything else in this series... especially because it's not a mystery like it keeps trying to claim.