Case Files is a deeply frustrating read.
I had already tried to get into the series before but gave up after going through half of the first book due to Grey's unbearable narration. The frequency and intensity with which she bellitled herself was so absurd that it ended up being comical, and did little to engage me with her personal conflicts while ruining the mood that the story was trying to set up.
Regardless, I just got a new kindle and had nothing to read on my commutes, so I decided to try Case Files again.
I've gone through three volumes and I have to talk about how infuriating the structure and writing are. It feels like the author's intentions, the focus of the book and my expectations as a reader are all pointed at wildly different directions, making for a read that doesn't manage to satisfy me for a single chapter. Mainly, the problems come from the trifecta of jumbled priorities, the sherlockian presentation and the failed character focus.
Priorities: If this little review was a chapter of casefiles, I'd follow up the use of the word trifecta above by conecting it to the Christian holy trinity, the triumvirate of the old Roman empire and the unshakeable structure of the isosceles triangle. Meaningless, surface-level connections that do nothing but increase word count.
It feels as if Sanda learned about the idea of magecraft coming from these cultural foundations engraved upon the land without ever actually reading type-moon stories featuring those mages, and mistakenly decided that it is those foundations that should be at the forefront. Case Files wants to be a story and a material book at the same time. Every moment is an opportunity to add exposition that, half of the time, isn't even about the nasuverse setting itself, but about a random assortment of real world history, math and phylosophy. Surprisingly, these expositions are often not even relevant to the story itself.
The Iselma duology spends a lot of time talking about different astronomical concepts and how they might relate to the magecraft of that house, but at the end what is really essential for you to understand the mystery is a Cinderella spell. Amid all that, Sanda cannot hold himself back and has to add other meaningless conections to concepts that are completely irrelevant to the narrative at hand even during the climaxes of the books.
It reminds me of first reading Fate/Stay Night, when Nasu decided to spread out the explanation of the Holy Grail War throughout the prologue, a strategy that was mostly successful, except for the part in which he inserted the most extensive and important section of the exposition right in the middle of the first major action scene in the visual novel, completely ruining the tension he had built up to that point.
In Case Files, the entire book is like that scene. Any moment that might be of interest to the reader is interrupted by exposition with no regard to pacing or atmosphere, as Sanda struggles to manage writing a setting glossary, a trivia book, a character study and a murder mystery, all at the time. His priorities are completely mixed up and every decision on how to structure these stories baffles me, which goes right into my second point.
The Sherlockian Presentation: Case Files pretends to be a mystery novel and fails miserably. Shockingly, the author is aware of its failure.
That, in and of itself, is fine. A book series that presents classic mystery novel tropes while admiting they don't work in a setting with magic is a fine idea that could work... if the book wasn't obsessed with emulating a mystery novel anyway. In both the first and second arc, the protagonists are taken to a new location to limit suspects and additional factors, the suspects are then presented, some additional information is laid out and the murder occurs. We then follow a tense investigation with the culprits still at large and attempting to impede the protagonists, all the while the motives of each suspect are revealed.Originally Posted by Vol. 3
The problem is that following this structure sets up expectations. As the reader, I'm trying to solve the mystery alongside the characters and start taking in all of the exposition as relevant information only to find out it is all irrelevant in the end (sometimes explicitly: in the first case they actually tell you the literal charts on angel lore and astrology included in the book do not matter).
Now, I'm not saying NOTHING that is said is involved in the case. Some of it is, but as the book itself said on that quote, we are not meant to deduce it. We can't.
And even still: that should be fine. Shelock Holmes itself has most of its mysteries be unsolvable without massive leaps until Holmes himself details everything for us. The difference here is that when Holmes delineates all the facts of the story and reaches his conclusion, we can follow right along with him. We might not be able to experience solving the mystery during the story, but we get to experience it during his elucidation due to the logical throughline that the author draws between all the clues that were presented before. These moments make even Holme's introspective musings, which are frustantingly obtuse when they happen, contribute to the eureka feeling when you finally understand what he was talking about.
Case Files does all of that set-up, including the frustratingly obstuse musings, but uses its premise to render it all meaningless. We can't solve the mystery because we lack crucial setting information AND are not granted enough time with each of the suspects... but then, Waver's elucidation isn't satifying either because the leaps he makes are so absurd due to the books own internal logic.
There is an unbelievably aggravating moment in the third book that I have to single out.
In book 2, the pharmacist Maio explains and demonstrates that he has a drug that makes one instantly drunk, and another to instantly sober-up. This was obvious set-up for some clue to the mystery that was about to be introduced. I kept it at the back of my mind, ready to remember it whenever it was made relevant again.
However, when we reach the elucidation, it turns out the only relevance of that scene is to show that the pharmacist can create medicine at all. The actual medicine that is relevant to this story (a memory erasing one) isn't even mentioned until the reveal. What the fuck?
The narrative tries to connect the two drugs by bringing up memory loss due to being too intoxicated, but it's such an unfair leap for both Waver and the reader to make.
Touko was the one who ingested the drug, why was there no scene showing the reader she was a bit inebriated at the start of the party, alternatively, why didn't Waver notice something off with her that is not shown to the readers (this is what Conan Doyle would've done!!).
Not to mention the memory loss it caused is also not a factor in the mystery at all until it is mentioned for the first time in the elucidation scene.
So, Sanda set up a clue that leads to a different clue that is only given during the eluciation to solve a question that was never asked until Waver made a massive logic leap during the final scene of the book.
Waver then takes an absurd turn to explain Cinderella spells and the extremely thin connection made between the fairty tale and Siegfried's legend, which once again left me agast at the absurdly poor planning that went into this. Volumes two and three spent so much time talking about astrology and how it related to the magecraft of the Sisters, yet it neglected to mention anything on fairy tales or the Nibelungenlied. Come one! It wasn't hard to do, it would've fit right in with the other random connections, and would have given them purpose: to obscure the fact that some are actually relevant!
Not to mention there is already a connection drawn between substituting the Sun for Venus, which translated into substituting one of the Sisters for the Maids. That part was briefly touched upon before, and the twin swap was easy enough to predict given the premise, but why was astrology not the main point of the elucidation (beyond the aesthetic of the scene)? It was an okay set up. Why introduce fucking Cinderella into it now without ever calling anything related to it into attention before? Huh? To get me more frustrated?
Oh, I know why:
Sure, but there's a problem even there.
Character Focus: The idea that only the whydunnit can be deduced (sorry, speculated) is a fine premise. It could give the author freedom to use magecraft that is unfamiliar to the reader while still giving them a thread to follow... so where the hell is the thread?
Waver needs to find the whydunnit, yet we spend so little time with each of the characters. It's absurd. The entirety of the second arc's murder happens due to two pairs of twins, their father and one of their two childhood friends. How much insight we get into the relationships between all those parties? Almost none.
a) Father is abusing twins
b) twins, twin maids and the two boys are childhood friends
c) Maio loved the murdered twin
d) Islo is actually a caring person
In any character-focused mystery like this one, you would expect us to spend a lot of time with those characters. Maybe give us a glimpse of each of the living twins personalities so we can notice something off in the scenes they're switched, maybe give us time with Maio while he grieves, maybe make Islo a bit suspiscious to throw the reader off but still introduce the idea of one of the boys as the murderer in our heads, maybe make us grapple with the possibility of Islo being the culprit contrasted with the brief moment of humanity he displayed, maybe introduce literally anything in the crime scenes that might connect to the magecraft of these friends... Anything. Literally anything.
The book itself introduces the idea that this is a mystery that can only be solved by understanding the personal connections and intentions of the characters involved, but then doesn't give us (OR WAVER) anything to work with? Why?
Once again, I think I know why. It's because while this is a character focused book, it's not interested in any of the supporting cast. These books are character studies into Waver, Grey and Reines. Mainly Waver. The two or three scenes per book that focus on that are fine, even good, so I can't for the life of me understand why Sanda decided to write msytery novels that rely on characterizing everyone else instead.
This man is clearly passionate about Waver and Type-Moon lore, yet he decided to write a genre that isn't well suited for worldbuilding, while also crippling any quality of the genre itself and stubbornly holding onto his passions anyway. I didn't want to turn my frustation with the books into anger at the author, but I have to say it at least once: What a fucking idiot.
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.) All Reines does is make me thankful we only ever got one scene in Kirei's POV.
