Per usual, Kyōgoku Natsuhiko starts with different, disconnected cases and weaves, Psychology, Religion, Gods and Culture while solving. A weird blend of religion, spirituality, psychology and thriller. Something only he could write. This particular volume alone made my head spin with theories. It's extremely wild and I have to give the translation team their due credit because without the pages of explanation on the rituals and stuff, it'd not have made any sense. I have grown to love Japanese folk tales because of this series now and am now determined to read as much literature as I could find.
I have come to learn that Mouryou no Hako which is one of the sequels has a anime adaptation on it. It delights me, I'll try to watch it. It might not follow Summer of Ubume but since I've read the first three in the series, I might as well give a try. The art is at times intense and pretty explicit in some places.
Wow all things considered I really didn't spend THAT much time reading this one, huh?
This was a fun book. I found its structure weaker than Moryo's and the mystery itself didn't pull me in as deeply, but the payoff was cool and sufficiently insane. I really liked some of the characters introduced here. The way the mystery ties into Ubume's initial philosophical rant and expands on some of its ideas is very cool. Not a favorite but a really solid read as a whole.
2025/11/17 edit: This is a favorite actually. Absolutely sick book which has some of the most fun plotting and imagery in the series. In retrospect it almost stands alongside with Moryo in regards to how much I enjoyed it.
This is an insanely good mystery novel that weaves in yokai, Buddhism, premodern Japanese history and even psychoanalysis! It's also really long (969 pages in my edition) and is somewhat slow at the start, but when it all comes together at the end where more than 200 pages are dedicated to explaining the entire mystery, that just makes the whole reading experience worth it. I just really like how Kyogoku's mystery is not supernatural but based in reality (especially how most of the ideas are very creative spins on Japanese history).
The Japanese here is quite challenging because Kyogoku uses old style kanji. A lot of the references to Buddhism and history, especially, are quite difficult to understand because I'm not familiar with them. Thankfully, most of that stuff is explained and made easily digestible for the reader.
I also appreciated the character Kiba just periodically going "what are you talking about?!" during Chuzenji's explanation of the whole mystery at the end, because, like Kiba, I was constantly going WTF and having my mind blown by all the crazy connections.
Since I bought this book randomly in BOOKOFF three years ago when I was in Japan, I didn't realise that it's actually the third in a series of yokai-themed mystery novels. I am definitely going to look for more of Kyogoku's novels when I get back to Japan! It's just a near-perfect blend of being intellectually challenging and stimulating while also being accessible.