lavagirl 's review for:

Lady Joker, Volume 1 by Kaoru Takamura

3.25

challenging reflective slow-paced

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This took me a long time to finish, but I blame that on myself not doing well with slow-paced books. I do think I enjoyed the first half more, only because I was anticipating the abduction and was more interested in those characters' perspectives and motives which led them to the big abduction of the CEO (I do enjoy a classic heist story). I did appreciate the amount of detail this book provides on multiple aspects of one incident, such as the alternate perspectives within each industry that is impacted. I think I became attached to the original characters of the first half, though. Unfortunately, the stock market and economic discussions flew right over my head and were a bit tedious. That might be one reason that I did not really care about the CEO and found his parts hard to get through. I do appreciate the insight the book provided into the political and economic climate of Japan at that time, especially from the point of view of various job professions and economic classes. The ending of Volume 1 was anticlimactic, but I could tell this was a grand set-up for the next volume, which I can appreciate. Each character was fleshed out and set up very well, although the large cast of characters was hard for me to keep track of at times. I plan on reading Volume 2 eventually, but the size of the volumes and their pacing do intimidate me a bit.