Author: Otaro Maijo
Publisher: Haikasoru
Rating: WARTY!
Translated by Stephen Snyder (no website found).
This story started out strongly and had some really fascinating and amusing moments when Aiko would go off at a tangent on some rant or another about something she had encountered. Unfortunately those were few and far between, and the further I read into this novel the less I liked it.
The big disappearance (Sano) that seemed to be driving the plot at the beginning simply fizzled out and went nowhere, and there seemed to be an increasing number of pages devoted to Aiko's dreams, all of which I skipped because I can't stand writers who write pointless and fatuous pages about a character's dreams. If the dream is somehow tightly-tied into the story, then fine. For example, if the character is psychic or is being communicated with in her sleep, then this would work, but that's not here. It was nothing more than self-indulgent, extravagant, and a waste of time. I skipped those pages.
I reached a point about two-thirds the way through or maybe less, where I really didn't want to read any more of this because it had lost all its interest for me, so I gave it up. Life is way too short to keep gamely plodding through a story that's not doing you any good, when there are countless other volumes out there which are just waiting to be read and which promise to thrill you. I can't recommend this novel.
