The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

Atmospheric, superb writing with fantastic revelations and little heartbreaks—details like the accent change are quietly devastating. It's at times smart and unpredictable, but can feel like it's lacking momentum in some places; not so much because of the pacing, which felt deliberate, and more because of how there's not much discernible plot and how it's about things happening to Thaniel, not the other way around.

(However, the Japanese parts can sometimes be wonky: maybe I'm just bad at learning Japanese, but I doubt things like syntax are something you can just pick up from a Japanese-English dictionary that quickly.)