RePainTrick

君の笑顔ひとつで救われたんだ magic of the smile

"Magic" (愛内里菜)

 

I was saved by a single smile of you

Magic of the smile 

"Magic" (Aiuchi Rina)

Today: a book I should have read a different time.

Most knowledge on magic had been lost after the medieval witch hunts, but about a century ago, people started studying magic again. While many types of magic once known to the world are now still "lost tasks" (forgotten arts), magic has been developing as a genuine academic field of science and there are universities across the world that have a magic faculty. Mind you, this is no Harry Potter. One has to be born with the ability to perform magic and at the moment, there are only six known magicians on the world, who are all put under the supervision of the Order of Zenith (OZ), a governing agency located in the UK. However, "normal" people can still study the workings of magic and do research on it, similarly to how not all Literature students actually write literature. Japan has been one of the slowest countries to become accepting of magic and it was only this academic year that a university opened the very first Magic Faculty in Japan. Jousui University had more big news however: they managed to get Shiina Sakyou, one of the six magicians on this world, on board as one of their teachers. Some months have passed since their promising first adventure at the start of the academic year involving Shiina and his seminar class, and it's become summer. Shiina invites his class to a two-day outing to a university research facility in the mountains, though only Amane (the narrator) and Ririko are able to make it. Shiina will be going there to meet fellow magician and friend Simon L. SmithKlyne. Simon is the youngest known magician, whose powers first manifested after a horrible plane accident in which his parents died. His younger sister Juno was about to die too, but Simon miraculously managed to use healing magic to save her, even though healing magic is a Lost Task and nobody has managed to recreate that old art. Since then, Simon and Juno have been put in the custody of OZ, with Simon specializing in alchemy magic. Through a mutual friend, Simon has obtained a formula that might allow him to use resurrection alchemy, but the magic requires the powers of at least two magicians, which is why he has travelled all the way to Japan to Shiina, under the supervision of OZ guards. 

The experiment is to be held at the Jousui University research facility, which is also where Amane and Ririko first meet Simon and Juno. Simon's lost the use of his legs after the plane accident, and his sister Juno has been taking care of him, while also being an accomplished magic researcher herself, and while they are considered authorities in the field, they are actually still young and turn out to be really nice to both Amane and Ririko. The experiment is held in the basement of the facility, with Shiina and Simon moving into a special closed off booth to protect others from possible magical rebounds. At first, things seem to go as planned, but the experiment suddenly backfires and ends in a complete failure. Simon is obviously both shocked and disappointed in the results nd stays in the lab to find out what went wrong. The next morning, Juno is in a panic because she can't find Simon, and eventually, they discover that the cellar lab is locked from the inside, and the only key is gone, because Simon had been carrying it with him. Shiina manages to open the lock using alchemy. Inside, they find that Simon has hung himside inside the booth, apparently in despair after his failed experiment. The key to the lab is also found with him, seemingly cementing this as a suicide. Juno however refuses to believe her brother committed suicide and she becomes enraged when she learns that the guards of OZ are trying to take away Simon's remains immediately back to the UK, as OZ considers the remains of a magician to important. The local police of course refuse to just let the people of OZ do whatever they want, but the problem is that it doesn't seem possible anyone could've murdered Simon, considering he was found inside a locked room. Of course, there was one other person at the facility who could have used alchemy to open and lock the door again, a thing easy enough to prove as there were only two magicians in Japan at the time. But Shiina isn't the murderer of course, and while the local police and OZ struggle with each other, another murder occurs in Kuzumi Shiki's Tricksters L (2005). 

Tricksters L is the second novel in Kuzumi's Tricksters series, but the third one I have read. Because, yep, I don't read things in order. Both the first Tricksters and Tricksters D (the third novel) were quite fun, so it was just a matter of time before I'd read more of this series, though I have to admit right now: I probably should have read this in order. Not because of spoilers or anything, but my timing of reading this book was just horrible, and it didn't help the experience at all. And there wasn't much this book could have done about that: it was just unlucky. Had I read this book months before, I would have liked the book much better.

About a month before I read Tricksters L, I happened to have read Konno Tenryuu's Renkinjutsushi no Misshitsu (2020), which also has the English title Alchemist in Locked Room. Which was a detective novel set in a world where alchemy exist. Okay, not a problem per se, though I hadn't expected this overlap in theme between the two books. Tricksters was about magic, and the first book introduced minor magic arts like locating people, but Tricksters L decided to focus on alchemy as a specific branch of magic, and little of the magic spells (and their specific rules/limitations) introduced in the first book returned in this book, as D was about alchemy. Fair. But then Tricksters D presented the plot of a mysterious death of an magician/alchemist in an underground lab, a locked underground lab to be exact, and a lot of the book revolving around the fact that only a fellow magician could have committed the murder inside a locked room, and of course, that our hero turns out to be that one person who could've been the murderer. Which is basically the same plot as Renkinjutsushi no Misshitsu, so you could imagine me being a bit disappointed reading these two books only two, three weeks apart. And what certainly didn't help was that ultimately, a lot of the ideas and concepts that make up the solution of both books are very similar. Strangely enough, despite mystery fiction often building on existing tropes and me practically only reading mystery, I don't experiece something like this often, and certainly not to the degree as this time.

Mind you, Tricksters L was released in 2005, and Renkinjutsushi no Misshitsu in 2020, so Tricksters D is of course the older one, and it's not like the solutions to both novels are exactly the same, but they do share a lot of similar ideas and that's why I already guessed what was going on very early in the book, for I still had the solution to Renkinjutsushi no Misshitsu in my mind. And if you know what happens in that book, it's very easy to apply some of the ideas seen there and see how they fit in Tricksters L and you'll realize that the two books are very similar, like a parallel world version. The idea on its own is still good, and ultimately, Tricksters L takes the idea to a different terminal station, and tells a very different kind of story based on the same idea, but still, it's easy to recognize that both books built upon the very same idea. As expected, the concept of alchemy does of course play an important role in this story, and while I think the "rules" of alchemy are not explored as much as the magic spells were in the first Tricksters, nor explained as detailed compared to the alchemy we see in Renkinjutsushi no Misshitsu, Tricksters L still manages to present a good, fair-play mystery set in a world with magic and alchemy. I do have to say that for a moment, I thought I was on the wrong track when a false solution was introduced which was to be completely honest, very memorable. Sure, the solution is proven to be wrong and if you take like a second to think about it, you realize very quickly why that particular idea to explain how the locked room was creeated wouldn't work, but the base dynamics/the foundation of that idea is wonderfully silly, really the kind of idea you only see in mystery novels, and the sort of idea you want to see in mystery novels. I would love to read a detective story that takes this solution and, with some tweaks, makes it the actual solution to a locked room mystery!

False solutions in general are a staple of the series by the way, which is partially why the series is called Tricksters: there's a lot of misdirection going in general, with false solutions being proposed by Shiina, Amane and others, and other misdirection going throughout the story that is only revealed at the end, and while these books are all very short, they usually manage to feel quite satisfying for puzzle plot lovers, as there's a lot of clewing and unraveling going on. While this second book doesn't go as far as the first book, which started with a sort of Challenge to the Reader announcing the reader will be fooled in seven different ways in the following chapters, it's still fun to see how in the end, Shiina and Amane reveal there was probably more misdirection going on than you might've expected at first.

Tricksters L had the unbelievable bad luck I happened to have read the one book on the world that is probably most similar to it just a few weeks before I started on Tricksters L. With similar motifs and even solutions that are at the care basically the same, you can understand why I felt a bit disappointed reading this book, even though it was not really the work's fault. Taken on its own, it's a perfectly enjoyable mystery novel, a bit short perhaps, but still fun and people who liked the first book certainly won't be disappointed by Tricksters L. The only tip I can give is really to not read this book and Renkinjutsushi no Misshitsu closely after another: there are just too many parallels and if you know the solution to one of them, it's really not hard to make the conversion and figure out what is going on in the other. Normally, I'd try to avoid spoiling this for other readers, but these two are just so incredibly similar and I really wouldn't want someone to have the same experience as I had. Let some time pass between the two books until you've forgotten the details.

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

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』

Trick and Magic

"You're a wizard, Harry."

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"

The cover art kinda reminds me of Vampire Hunter D even though the art style is completely different.

Most knowlege of magic was lost after the medieval witch hunts, and it was only about a century ago when Aleister Crowley and other magicians started conducting serious research on witchcraft in order to recover all the magic that was lost. Magic is a talent you're born with and very few of these natural magicians exist: all of them are members of, and observed by the international organization the Order of Zenith, and at this moment, only six magicians are known to live. But the fundamentals to the workings of magic, research methods regarding magic and many more topics can be studied by anyone, and in the century that has passed since the renewed interest in magic, witchcraft has developed into a proper academic field, with people across the world studying it, even if they can't conduct magic themselves, similar to how not all Literature students actually go on to write books. The existence of magic is undeniable, but not every culture and country has a proper history of magic due the relatively young age of the field and because magicians themselves are very rare. Japan in particular has very little affinity with magic.

Which is why it became big news when it was announced that Jousui University would be opening the very first Magic Faculty of Japan, and not only that, they even managed to rope in one of the six living magicians as a teacher! Narrator Amane is one of the students in the first class of the Magic Faculty, and is placed in a small seminar class with Ririko, Hio, Imina, Rie and Chisato, five girls and best of friends who have been in the same class ever since elementary, going from Jousui Elementary to Jousui Secondary and now all together in the Magic Faculty of Jousui University. The six students are especially lucky, as they are placed in the seminar class taught by Sakyou Shiina himself, one of the six magicians on this world. Shiina can be a bit of a trickster, but he takes things more seriously after a strange threatening message is broadcast during the opening ceremony of the academic year, where a voice calling themselves Aleister Crowley announces that someone here will be chosen as a sacrifice and they are challenged to deduce who the victim will be, and who the culprit is. At first, it sounds like a bad prank, but one day, Ririko fails to appear in class, and when Shiina uses the magic spell Search, they learn she's on the roof of the building. But when they find her there, she's lying unconsciously on the floor, her face horribly mutilated. Luckily, Ririko will survive the attack and Shiina even declares Ririko's face can be saved, but the police are facing a riddle: the staircase security camera shows that Ririko had been the only person to go up the rooftop that day until she was discovered by Shiina and the others, and there are no other ways to reach or leave the rooftop. For a second, suspicion falls on magic, but that is impossible too. Not only is Shiina the only magician around, current knowledge of magic is still nowhere the level of medieval magicians, and many magic spells are currently "Lost Tasks": spells we know once existed, but of which knowledge is gone. Spells that could make this attack on Ririko possible, like levitation or psycho-kinesis, simply don't exist now. So if it is not magic and not a human act, what made this impossible attack possible in Kuzumi Shiki's Tricksters (2005)?

Tricksters is a six-part light novel series from the mid 2000s and as you will have realized by now, it's one of those mystery novels that feature supernatural story elements and people who have been following this blog for a longer time now I absolutely love it when fair-play puzzlers make use of supernatural elements, as many of my favorite reads these last few years have done exactly that. The initial setting might remind you a bit of Harry Potter, because it's about a school setting and magic, but fortunately, you won't be thinking of Harry Potter all the time because ultimately, the concepts are very different here: not only are there only six magicians in this world (who are all being watched by the Order of Zenith), knowledge of magic too is still relatively shallow, with known spells being fairly limited in their range and power. This helps keep the mystery plot fair of course, as you can't get away just by saying a magician did it. The explanation that magic, as an academic field, is similar to Literature and that people can study the topic without actually practicing it themselves, is pretty easy to understand too.  

And it's also clear right from the start this isn't going to be a normal detective story, as the book basically opens with a Challenge to the Reader, albeit an unusual one. "A Challenge from a Magician" tells the reader that in the following six chapters, people will be deceived and tricked in seven different ways, and it's up to the reader to figure out all seven acts of deception. Interestingly, the challenge is about finding out that there's deception going on, and is not explicitly asking you to solve it. Some are pretty easy to identify, like the reader instantly realizes *some trickery* is going on regarding the impossible attack on Ririko even if you might not figure out how it was done immediately, but some of the other deceptions are well... very deviously hidden, and it did add a fun extra layer to the book. Obviously, this focus on trickery is what gave this book its title.

And it's the seven-fold trickery going on that makes this a surprisingly fun read. You'll be through this book fairly swiftly, as it's not particularly long and most of the text consist of dialogue, but the story offers more mystery than just the initial attack on Ririko. After her attack, some other mysterious events follow, but these events still bring the reader (and narrator Amane and Shiina) back to the same questions: why and how was Ririko attacked on the rooftop, and how did the assaillant get away, because it would have been impossible with or without the use of magic. Because this is a detective story that goes through all the effort to introduce a magic setting, I assume very few readers will be surprised that magic is involved in the trickery in some manner, but figuring out how magic is used won't be easy, especially as the book does a good job at setting limitations on the known types of magic and their effective range. The solution to the locked room situation is therefore quite satisfying, as the book never feels like it's actually cheating you, even though it is called Tricksters. That combined with the fact the mystery plot unfolds beyond the initial locked room situation makes this an amusing to read overall. You'll be thinking of the "seven deceptions" all the time and try to figure out where something is not quite right and whether someone is being deceived in some way and these deceptions do intertwine well.

Tricksters is a fun, short read that makes good use of its magic setting to present an original mystery story, and the book also does justice to its title by really trying to deceive the reader in more than one way, having a much deeper mystery plot than you'd initially expect. I initially became interested in this series because I had heard good things about the third entry of this series (Tricksters D), but it was mentioned it was best to read these books in order (or at least one of the first two books), so I started with this one. It certainly got me interested in the rest of the short series, so expect more Tricksters in the future here.

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