イクサガミ(天) 
Week 1
Advanced Book Club
Home Thread
| Week 1 |
May 30th, 2026 |
| Chapter(s) and sections |
予ノ章 + 壱ノ章(一 + 二) |
| Start page |
5 |
| End page |
38 |
| Page count |
33 |
| Stop percent |
11% |
| Next week |
week 2 |
Vocabulary
Discussion Guidelines
Spoiler Courtesy
Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
- Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
- Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
- Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags
Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).
Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:
Example
This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.
The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.
This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.
Character names
Maps for reference
Participation
Will you be reading along with us this week?
Will you be reading with us?
- I’m reading along
- I will catch up later
- I’m still reading the book, but I haven’t reached this part yet
- I’ve read this previously, but I’m here for the discussion
- I’m reading this book after the club has finished
- I’m no longer reading the book
Votes are public.
That went better than I had feared 
Summary
The historical introduction was brief but felt sufficient for the time, and the scenery around the game was straightforward enough 
What I really like so far is the author‘s frequent usage of proverbs. Surprisingly, these often resembled German or English ones, so I could generally understand them without lookups. I wonder if this is an accurate representation of the language of the time or whether it’s the author’s literary freedom Curious to see how this continues.
I finished this week’s portion now as well. Pretty good stopping point.
What kinda surprised me was that the digital Bookwalker edition has relatively many Furigana. Since I’m reading digital, lookups aren’t a big problem either way, but it was interesting nonetheless. Lookup frequency is okay for me. Some more obscure words here and there but doesn’t feel wildly different to the other books I’m reading at the moment.
The writing on the other hand feels super strange to me. Compared to all other books I’m reading the sentences are way too short. I’m just starting to read the sentence and when I think “now the meat of the sentence should start” I encounter a period… Then the next text fragment, another period. It feels really strange somehow. Let’s see if I get used to the writing over time or if it will continue to bug me.
Thoughts
At first, I nearly got a heart attack seeing the カタカナ in the news that got distributed. But luckily it was the only instance of カタカナ writing thus far. I’m reading 4 books at the moment: 2x 言う 1x 云う 1x 謂う - I now have the full lineup active XD.
The setup was okay to read. I have watched some of the episodes from the netlix show in preparation to get a feeling for the setting before trying to only read about it. The most interesting difference so far is the setup. We don’t know much of our protagonists’ backstory so far whereas the series starts with backstory. So I’m looking forward to how the book introduces these parts and the additional characters.
Yeah, that is a nice touch that I liked as well.
I decided to start with the TV show so I can get ahead on 十角館の殺人. So far I’ve seen Episode 1, which was… fine. It seems like they want to make a serious historical drama, but the character designs feel like they belong in a lighter, Pirates of the Caribbean-style adventure instead. I wonder if they got any visual inspiration from the manga? 
Story spoilers (the show goes faster than the book so watch out): the Squid Game influence is very clear, especially with the rich guys watching the “game.” I’m surprised they gave away the “we hate Samurai and want them to kill each other” motivation so fast - usually they reveal that sort of thing later. Maybe it’s actually more complicated…
