Yeahhh…. Cover Art Doesn’t Make Up For This Book’s Writing

I recently began reading a book called Catfish Rolling by Clara Kumagai, and from the start of the book you could barely tell what kind of genre the book was about. This review of the book is not going to be complete slander but there are some things that are very confusing. There is a girl named Sora, whose mom and grandpa died by an earthquake in the prologue, and in the present she lives in Japan with her scientist dad who appears to always be in a forgetful, semi hungover state. Apparently the earthquake was so big that it broke time itself and now Japan has different “time zones”. Some are slow zones, so things there are preserved for longer, and when you bring them into what are established as the normal zones, they sometimes just disintegrate or become much older than when they were in the slow zone. Sora’s grandpa used to tell her stories about a catfish that lives under Japan, and whenever it moves or rolls, it causes earthquakes. The government has deemed the abnormal zones dangerous and everyone except researchers and scientists are forbidden from entering. 

This seems like a very cool premise for a fantasy book, but the style of writing gives it a more slice of life feel and I still don’t know if the catfish is supposed to be a mystical being or is just some sort of metaphor for the whole book. Until recently I couldn’t even tell if the slow and fast zones were real or if Sora was just talking about actual time zones that we have in real life. There is also a random romance with her close male friend Koki who ends up leaving for college in Tokyo after only a few chapters, which feels completely pointless. In my previous blog post I talked about how book covers are very important when it comes to first capturing a person’s attention. This book does a very good job of that because the cover art is beautiful and the title is also very interesting, however, I just feel like the cover art is honestly better than the book starts. I won't judge it by its start quite yet; there is a chance for redemption. Reading a book with a bad start may deter you from continuing to read it, and trust me I feel the same, but continuing to the end may just be worth it. Until then, I will have to wait and see.

-Lucia