Review: Crystal Hunters #8, by Nathaniel French
by
Stuart Holland
スバサはこの本に友達を危険にさらします。それを読むのは難しいけどそれは彼女の物語です。彼女はこの話前にたくさん危ない事件がありました。その危ない事件はおわりましたないです。スバサのお兄さんはその事件を話すのスバサを悲しませます。この本の後半はダフニーについてです。ダフニーの物語は本当に悲しいです。私は前の記事に「この大人のテーマと易しい言語は私をびっくりさせます」と言いました。これ本のダフニーの話は他の例えのそれににてします。
And I’m serious about that (assuming I’ve got it right and you can understand it), that the flashbacks to Daphne’s past from before the series are genuinely sad. Both sets of emotions here, Subasa’s feelings of inadequacy and her frustration with not earning the approval of her (abusive) family and Daphne’s insecurity after being exploited as an orphan, are remarkably difficult subjects to cover with such simple language. The language has certainly gained complexity since book 1, but it’s still rudimentary compared to, say, this paragraph I’m writing here.
Crystal Hunters has continued to boost my Japanese reading confidence and has definitely helped me internalize more grammar through repeated example. (Though I’m pretty sure I’ve learned the casual form of “must do something” better than the formal one now, which will inevitably trip me up.) The decision to continue layering on more complex language but slowly, so that it doesn’t bog down the story, is a difficult balance to strike, but Crystal Hunters does it very well.
And the language learning is great, but it’s only effective because it tells a story that’s engaging to read as well.
