The Secret in the Dark

"Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.” 

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"

I like the art style of these covers, but they are literally all just Shiina, so when you look at all six covers which are basically all the same, it's kinda boring. I wish there was more variety in terms of composition...

After losing most knowledge on magic in the witch hunts, mankind has been rediscovering and re-examining magic and in the last century, magic has developed as an academic field. While there are only six known magicians on the world, magic can be studied by anyone as an academic theme, the same way not all Literature students actually write literature. Japan is still just a "developing" country when it comes to magic and it is only this year that Jousui University opened Japan's very first Magic Faculty. After incidents occuring in April and June, narrator Amane and fellow Magic students Ririko, Hio, Imina, Rie and Chisato had a short, uneventful time, but a new mystery befalls upon them in October, during the 42nd Jousui University Campus Festival. Early in the day, Amane and Ririko are asked by Imina to swing by the stand of the Mystery Club, as she's a member of the club. During the opening ceremony of the festival, the two walk over to the General Studies A Building to find the stand, but suddenly they become unconscious. When they wake up, they find themselves inside the General Studies A Building together with a few members of the Mystery Club, but for some reason they find the building is completely covered in darkness. Literally even. It's not just that the lights are out: there's some black force field enveloping the whole building, keeping daylight out and preventing them from going outside. The people inside start looking for a way out and an explanation for what obviously seems like a feat of magic, though the two Magic students are quite sure no single magician could ever pull such a force field off and given that their own professor Shiina is the only magician known to be in Japan at the time, the whole thing seems quite impossible. But as they look for answers and an exit, they are attacked by a mysterious being and one by one, they are taken away by the beast. Can Amane and Ririko figure a way out to contact the outside world and their professor and save everyone in Kuzumi Shiki's Tricksters D (2006)?

A month ago I reviewed the first Tricksters, which I thought was a fun light novel which used a magic setting to tell an entertaining and clever mystery story. Magic is still a developing academic field in the world of Tricksters, so the number of possible magic spells are still fairly limited, all with clearly defined limitations, so magic as a plot element in a mystery story feels very fair here. I mentioned in the previous review that it was actually Tricksters D that first caught my attention, as I had seen some people discuss it as a very clever mystery novel, but with the caveat that it was the third novel in the series and that it was best to read the first two novels first, or at least one of them. This is actually also mentioned in the introduction to Tricksters D. So that's why I did read Tricksters first, though I have skipped the second novel for the time being to go straight to Trickster D. I'll probably return to the second novel in due time.

I do have to say that I'm happy I read Tricksters first though. Not just because it makes for a much better introduction to the characters and setting, it also featured a more "familiar" mystery plot with a good old fashioned impossible situation/locked room mystery, while Tricksters D has a more tricky plot to it. In a way, Tricksters D reminded me of Houjou Kie's Kotou no Raihousha ("Visitors on the Remote Island"), which also featured a plot where the characters are trapped inside a closed circle while being hunted by an unknown being, and part of the story revolved around figuring out what the unknown assaillant is, how it is conducting its attacks and why this is all happening. In Tricksters D, we have a group of students who are trapped in a building that's been cut off from the outside world by some kind of magic cloak with something hunting them in the darkness. It's not a typical plot for a detective story and because of the other focus of the story, I too wouldn't recommend people starting with Tricksters D.

For the other part builds on your knowledge of the previous stories, but in a surprisingly funny manner. Trapped inside the building with members of the Mystery Club, Amane and Ririko are startled to learn that those students already know them... in a way. It is only then that Amane and Ririko are told that Imina has been writing a mystery series for the club with the title Tricksters, based on the adventures they had with their professor Shiina the last few months. What follows is a fun meta-look at Tricksters and the characters themselves, with Amane and Ririko slowly realizing that Imina has used "artistic freedom" in her portrayal of the past events and that the characters based on themselves are both accurate, but also fictionalized on certain points. This blending of reality and fiction however is also played on the reader, with some events we saw in the previous books being explained as having been quite different from reality and the result feels likke a recontextualization and subversion of Tricksters lore in an interesting manner, especially as the original Tricksters derived its title that it was fooling the characters and the reader in multiple ways: seeing the third novel suddenly turning things around again is something most series wouldn't get away with, but it strangely works for Tricksters and the pay-off this sub-plot builds towards to in the end is actually really good. But for the ideas presented here to work, you do really need to have at least read the first Tricksters.

As for the main mystery of Tricksters D, it is an entertaining one, but it's hard to write about the story in detail, because like with Kotou no Raihousha, so much revolves around the slow process of peeling away the layers to find out what is actually happening. Early on, they figure out that the sudden black-out inside the building, the force field outside the building that blocks light and physical movement in and out the building, and the beast that's attacking them one by one must be related to a magic amp (amplifier) that was kept inside the building, but the precise connection between all these points remains vague, so the reader is kept guessing at the correct explanation until the end. I have to admit that the plot was much more complex than I had first imagined: there was a lot more trickery going on than I had noticed, and the way the story eventually manages to tie up all the minor spots that at first seemed mildly odd, was quite good. The Tricksters books are of course set in a world where magic and magicians exist, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to learn that magic (and the related set of rules) are connected to the solution in a way (in this case, the magic amp plays a big role), but I do think that Tricksters D is not as good in explaining the world of magic and its workings as the first novel. The books were obviously written to be read in order, so details on magic and magicians might feel a bit lacking in this novel, which could make the final explanations of the case feel a bit underwhelming. In that sense too, it is greatly advised not to read Tricksters D as your first Tricksters.

Would I say that Tricksters D was better than the first book in the series? It's definitely more unique, with a rather creepy atmosphere and an interesting mystery because at first it's not clear at all what's going on and as the reader, you honestly have no idea where to even begin to start solving this mystery, but then slowly the darkness is lifted and it does reveal a clever mystery plot that is both original and it makes good use of the existence of magic, but a lot of the better points of the book work only in the context of the series, so you do need to have read another Tricksters first for this book to really work. But if you've read more entries in this series already, you definitely owe it to yourself to read Tricksters D too, because it's a really original meta-take with an original mystery plot.

Original Japanese title(s):　久住四季『トリックスターズD』