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Notes -
So, what are you reading?
I'm picking up Delany's Babel-17. In an old SF mood. Something about language.
For a less traditional kind of reading material, I've been reading the visual novel The Sekimeiya: Spun Glass, a mystery story released in 2021 by Trinitite Team.
The novel takes place in an office building, where an unique gem called the Sekimeiya is exhibited to the public. Suddenly, unknown assailants release knockout gas in the building. Several visitors lose consciousness, and wake up to find themselves trapped: all the exit doors are sealed shut by the tower's impregnable security system. It's a fairly typical setup for a "closed circle" mystery story. However, about a quarter of the way through Chapter 1,it is revealed that the Sekimeiya is a time travel device.
This becomes the foundation of a mind-bendingly convoluted mystery, withdead bodies appearing and disappearing, people appearing in two places at once, and timelines twisting and turning in zigzags , and these aren't even the strangest things happening in the novel.
The developers really want you to try and solve the mystery on your own, and provide several unusual tools to do so: there's a complete transcript of every single line said in the game (which you can search by keyword or speaker), a detailed recap of every notable event, dedicated note-taking sections for each scene, and a detailed map that precisely tracks the protagonist's location at any given moment. Just reading the entire thing can easily consume over 30 hours, but re-reading it to unravel every mystery on your own is a quest is likely going to take... well, I'm maybe 5 hours into that endeavor, and I've barely started figuring things out.
Here I'll admit that, while I've read a lot of mystery stories in the past, I've never approached them "properly"; I never tried to find the answer on my own before the detective's summation -- I was perfectly content to simply read the answer and revel in the surprise of the plot twist. Sekimeiya is only my second attempt to solve a mystery properly... which is honestly an audacious choice, given its extreme complication. However, the writing is good enough that I do not mind re-reading it, and the music is high-quality as well.
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