The Advanced Book Club has read through volumes 1 and 2 of 香君 (here is the home thread for that read-through). For people who want to finish the story by reading the remaining two volumes, this is an informal thread for discussion and questions.
Volume 3 covers chapters 4.7 to 5.10; if you’re reading the two-volume edition of 香君 this will be the first half of the 下 volume.
There is no set schedule for this book, and all discussion will be in this single thread. Please use spoiler tags and say which part of the book they are spoilers for.
I had a pause on reading more 香君 while I finished a different book, but I had a trip for work this week, and volume 3 was one of the books I took with me to read on the plane. So, some thoughts on chapter 4 (i.e. up to page 136):
Well, that was an interesting little tropical island holiday, but it seems like it’s over now. Congratulations to everyone who correctly guessed at the end of book 2 that the mystery behind the window was some kind of オアレ稲 – I wasn’t sure about that because I thought it wouldn’t be enough to make アイシャ react that way, but apparently this new variant is really scary stuff.
I did correctly guess that クリナ was keeping watch on them, though not that she was a professional spy.
We still seem to be finding out new information about how オアレ稲 works – the careful set of rules the first 香君 set up have clearly been keeping it very carefully in a small range of its full natural behaviours, and we’re now going further outside those. I expect whatever predator of オオヨマ it is trying to attract is going to turn up – presumably it is unable to fly across the ocean to this island, but when they start doing the same thing on the mainland we’ll find out what it is. One of my original ideas about オオヨマ was that they would be some kind of locust like insect that ate everything, but it seems like they’re more of a simple small crop pest; perhaps the new threat will be locusts?
Well, I definitely wasn’t expecting butterflies. These don’t seem to work quite like butterflies here do, though: they can fly as soon as they hatch, with no caterpillar stage. This doesn’t seem like it’s going to be good, and I hope that オリエ is not out in some rural district without much protection when the butterflies reach it, as the reaction of the local farmers could easily turn ugly.
…I have just realized that I should have looked バッタ up in a dictionary rather than guessing it. In fact these are locusts or grasshoppers, so I was right all along…
Indeed! I enjoyed the new, closed environment with all the experiments going on, but it feels like things will really start to move more quickly now. The title of chapter is very ominous..
No asterisk, but they might have felt the end of the volume stood in for one. Volume 3 stops after just four pages of chapter 3.10; the last sentence ends 黙って文をマシュウに渡した。
That should be 5.10 though All these confusing numbers!
Took this weekend’s readathon as an opportunity to read this book; I just finished 5.5.
Some random thoughts
Sometimes it feels really like a children’s book with its naive narration, e.g. when Mashu came to visit Miria to rescue the two hostages… (“Yeah, you know, we will just tell the others that you asked the two over to help you with your crops, and so you will not be accused.” )
Then again, it is nerve-wreckingly real, like when Aisha talked to the village chiefs and they were all like “we need to think about this” / “we need to get permission, and that takes time” / “we don’t believe you” …
My prognosis is that eventually Aisha will go into the strange land where the grasshoppers came from to see whether she can fix it at the origin. Let’s see
It’s more complicated than that, isn’t it? The new rice solves multiple political problems for the empire (other provinces see that the initial punishment of this area was clearly unjust, and the empire needs a vaguely graceful way to walk back their punitive tactics without outright admitting they were doing it for political reasons to start with; the empire needs something to deal with the insect problem). So there is a deal to be made there: turning a blind eye in exchange for information.
After all the resistance and anger we had just witnessed in Oramu’s discussion with Aisha, Mashuu now comes in and says “yeah he will agree” and that’s what felt a bit incredible to me at the time of reading… (now reading it again, I don’t have this strong sensation any more, so maybe it was just a momentary thing )
Yeah, I see what you mean. I think partly this ties in with マシュウ’s point that e.g. オラム and イール aren’t evil, they just see the preservation of the empire as an important means to helping people. So オラム gets angry in the earlier conversation with アイシャ because he sees the secret fields plan as destabilising for the empire and unthinkably risky; whereas マシュウ presents his “we’ll just brush this under the carpet” proposal as the best way to stop the empire falling apart, so we can guess オラム is going to be persuadable about this, at least enough to go along as far as “let’s get back to the capital and report to イール and let him make the call”. And it’s pretty plausible that マシュウ has a good instinct about his brother’s likely reaction. But it is a bit “author needed a way to get everyone back off the island again” clunky.
Haha nicely put! Maybe it was just a bit too rushed or too much cut short compared to the long back and forth we had on all other occasions
Anyway, I’m happy to report that I finished the book this morning
And of course, it was to be expected that the pests would not die out that easily (as I’m assuming that is what Aisha reports in her message - or maybe some other beast followed them from the otherworld?
All these confusing numbers!
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