Doesn’t it usually take at least that long? What with all the chatting. 
Ha ha, you are definitely one of my people!
Why don’t you check in to see if we’re still going?
OK a small piece not yet commented on.
Even if he doesn’t say it out loud, Shunan knows that his younger brother hates him because he is destined to become a retainer when Shunan himself becomes Aruhan. However, in this era when even the citizens can feel the strains in the country, inheriting the position of Aruhan is not something Nugan would be longing to do.
My guess is that the father wants his son to be Aruhan, but Shunan wants to marry the princess.
Finally finished this week’s reading. After some help from @Kyasurin and reading the summaries, I think I got all the main/important points. I’m sure I’ll ask plenty of questions tomorrow morning at the read aloud session.
@valkow Thanks so much for your summary. It was super helpful. Just two notes on the katakana names. First, the princess’s name is セイミヤ, not ヘイミヤ. Though it totally could have been that with their family’s naming convention. I wonder if that’s effectively their surname. Second, I think it’s ヨジェ (small ェ), not ヨジエ. Yet another reason why having properly sized furigana would be nice…
Feel free to make fun of me
For a while I didn’t pick up on the fact that ヨジェ was a woman. When it got to the point where it mentioned 老女 I just didn’t understand the sentence because until then I’d assumed the 王 was male. Turns out I guess that was the first clear indication that ヨジェ was a woman.
Once that was cleared up I was confused when it was talking about the ヨジェ and 王女. Why you ask? Because I totally mistook 王女 for 女王. So for a full minute I was like, “this doesn’t seem like the kind of story that would introduce a lesbian royal couple”. Glad I got that cleared up before the read aloud session…
Thanks for the name help! I will fix it in my summary to help my future self remember (maybe).
On page 207, what’s with 生きまする? It’s in the context of super old and polite dialog, but I’ve never seen this before.
まする is just the old (古文) version of ます.
In other news, I have just reached this chapter, but I’ll read it tomorrow considering what time it is now 
I’ve just finished reading it, many words I didn’t know here and this made tiresome this part for me. Anyway it seems I got the gist of it and I’m glad to carry on now 
Can someone help me understand the word 軋む? It’s used all over the place recently, but I can’t figure it out.
The jisho definition is “to jar; to creak; to grate”
The Goo definition is “物と物とがすれ合って、きしきし、みしみしなどと音を立てる”
Here is an example sentence from this section:
王とアルハンの関係が軋みはじめたのは、ヤマン・ハサルの孫の時代である。
The second definition in 大辞林 is 「対立して互いに張り合うこと。争うこと。不和。」, so it looks like it can also mean when two groups are in conflict.
As @catbus said. 軋む means that there’s noise coming from friction between things. It can of course be used literally, but, just like in English, “friction” can metaphorically indicate some sort of conflict (not full-blown aggression but definitely unease).
Well this look an incredible amount of time and effort to read. I had to do this in like 4-5 reading sessions instead of the usual 1-2. The summaries were very useful, I can’t believe how much some of you wrote 
I wanted to catch up soonish but now I’m even more behind ;_;
I hope I don’t have to read more chapters like this one any time soon (I mean, it was kinda fun trying to piece eveything together, but a bit much for a regular thing).
Maybe for the next bookclub pick.
Still slogging along…these new 真王 chapters are really hard to read, just from the shear amount of new/unusual vocab 
First time I have to leave a comment. Until now, I was going with my theory that you all put the book into a too hard category in natively. In the last few chapters, some people said it was hard to read, but it felt pretty easy to me. But this chapter actually was pretty hard.
At least I could finish it in 2 relatively normally sized reading sessions and understood a good 95% of it. Wanted to say thank you for your discussions either way. Having the summary, especially of valkow is definitely a nice support of future readers for this book.
Wow does this really say “6 years later” above your comment? 
I didn’t remember at all that it was so long ago, really. And can you imagine we met to read this aloud every Sunday? It was such an entertaining event.
For the book, yes, some parts are not too bad, but whenever the worldbuilding kicks in, the difficulty always increases dramatically, at least in my memory. (And that holds true for other 上橋 books as well.) I’m glad to see that you seem to be enjoying it nonetheless! I also enjoyed it a lot (and also 鹿の王 - pardon the shameless plug hehe).
I think it’s not as hard as you remember. Think about all you have read in the past 6 (it’s honestly closer to 5 1/2) years. If you would pick it up again I think you’d also feel it is pretty manageable. Didn’t whup my ass half as bad as 国宝 
.
Yeah crazy that you all actually met to read the chapters out loud. What a crazy commitment.
I do enjoy it a lot. At the faster pace I read it at (2 sub-chapters today e.g.) the world really does come to life. I would have already finished book 1 if it wasn’t for the Aozora challange that took over most of my December reading.
Still waiting on how it all connects, but I probably have to wait for book 2 for that. It is a pretty extensive setup so I expect some payoff sometime. Only thing is; I start to miss Erin. A whole chapter (3) without her kinda felt strange.
Depending on what I think after finishing the series I might pick up 鹿の王 at a later time. But I do have many reading commitments already, don’t think I need anything new for the foreseeable future.
Yes, I agree with you. I was at a much lower level back then than where you are at now, to begin with (I had barely passed N3 back then)
And I also agree that books are usually more entertaining the more you can dive into the story and the faster you can read them.
She is so sweet 
My memory could be failing me, but I remember 獣の奏者 really easing us into the worldbuilding a lot more gradually than 香君 (I haven’t read 鹿の王), and that’s why even all those years ago 獣の奏者 felt easier than 香君 did this year.