"The Beast Player" by Nahoko Uehashi (translated by Cathy Hirano)

Really my only major quibble with this book is that it could have used a bit more denouement. But then it also has like five story arcs one after another, so 80% of them ended properly, even if the last one left off somewhat abruptly.

*looks at Goodreads*

So it turns out there's a sequel. Never mind, the lack of denouement can stand.

This was originally written in Japanese, and had to be translated into English. I suspect that, in Japanese, the prose is beautiful. The translation is, well, a translation, so it can be a bit choppy at times, but one does get used to it fairly quickly. I did, at least.

The titular beasts are these giant flying things called Royal Beasts. I imagined them as birds, but they're not really birdlike; they have fur and teeth, and they don't lay eggs.

As it was originally published (in Japan), this was two separate books. That goes some way toward explaining the abundance of story arcs.

In the first of the several of those, the main character acquires a wise mentor slash surrogate father figure. He keeps bees, and he's really nice. It's entirely possible he's my favorite character in the entire book.

This author likes to put her protagonist through moral dilemmas, which is not something I see often in books. Usually the only moral choices a protagonist will face are A) the ones that are a choice between doing the right but difficult thing or the wrong but easy thing, or B) the ones where the right choice is obvious to the reader, if not the characters. This book opts for C), the ones where there's a choice between two options and both of them are, in some form, the bad option.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: ...a soft T15+ for mostly veiled sexual references. One of the main plot points revolves around the reason why the giant flying bird things don't reproduce in captivity, and it involves them, y'know, reproducing. It's not described in any detail, but it does happen.

4 stars.

(Endnote: This has nothing to do with the Beast Crest from Hollow Knight: Silksong.)