A Slippery Slope in an Ad Agency by Yu Sakurazawa
ETA: Damn, posting a review minus the actual review? Senior moment.
I had some issues with this one. It is, on the surface, a cracky romp that addresses trans issues in a fairly superficial way, playing for laughs and yanking the reader along with it. To an extent it succeeds in this aim. But it left me feeling rather uneasy at the complete lack of affect displayed by prominent characters, over their own morally dark, dark grey actions and the damage done to at least one MC as a result. Yeah, it’s crack, yeah it’s a romp. There’s a limit, though. Even in the glossiest most superficial soap, the MC him/herself wouldn’t usually 100% treat his/her own sufferings as if casually experienced at one remove. Surgery without consent, medical negligence, assault, deception, lies and fraud are treated as if barely meriting a journal line, still less a page or two.
Beyond that, the author’s command of English is not impeccable, and the whole book would have benefited from a professional edit.
I can’t give the title an honest rec bearing in mind these issues, although it certainly has a lot of personality and energy, and is a long way from standard fare.
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