A review by colourbandit
Lady Joker by Kaoru Takamura

mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Lady Joker was a hugely slow-going thriller/crime novel. It was so disappointing as it had such promise and a genuinely really interesting story and concept overall, but for me it really missed the mark in terms of execution. 

It was so unnecessarily long, and I find it so hard to believe that was only volume 1. There seems like so much left to cover despite how many pages this volume took up. It took literally about half of the book to get into what the story was actually about and to fully meet and introduce all of the main characters, and I really was not enjoying it too much up to that point. 

The characters are a whole other point on their own. The fact that there needed to be a 3 page character list with descriptions at the beginning speaks for itself, but that isn’t counting all the extra individuals who are mentioned once or twice, but we’re still expected to keep up with. I found it so confusing at times and had to refer to the list at the beginning countless times. I also wish we had more writing from the perpetrators in the second half of the book as it became very heavy just on the side of the police and reporters. I feel like it would make sense for this to be more present in volume 2, and hope it is, but it was just missing in this book for me. 

I appreciate that in translated Japanese fiction there is often a lot of wordy, beautifully written description, and this was true of Lady Joker, with lots of really incredible writing and nuance about the human condition. But it got to a point where it felt excessive, and I’m just not sure it works in such a long story compared to the shorter translated novellas that I usually read. Also, not all of the writing was beautiful and engaging. Unfortunately so much of the book felt like I was reading lists from board meetings or corporate documents with excessive detail that it could’ve still made sense, and been easier to read without. 

Overall, I feel like as someone who isn’t very familiar with Japanese history and culture, a lot of the context of the story was unfortunately lost on me, which likely made it even more laborious to read. I did enjoy it at times, but it was very on/off enjoyment. I feel like I will want to pick up volume 2 at some point as it feels a bit unsatisfying to finish the story here without any real resolution when I’ve put so much time and energy into it, but I just hope I remember enough about what happened to fully engage.