This manga is all about subtle misdirection. It doesn't outright lie to you, but it tries to deceive you by careful omission and double-meanings. You can't even trust the synopsis, and you must pay attention to every panel and its possible double interpretations.

Although, in contrast to fiction that is all about twists and turns of plot, nearly all the revelations in Doctor Du Ming are psychological ones. It's your understanding of the characters and their motivations that will shift drastically, and that would color the few important events in the manga in a different light.

The art is distinctive and realistic, to the point where some panels look almost rendered from pictures. It's not to my taste, but I'm sure a lot of people would appreciate it and find it refreshing.

It's a character-driven manga, so I can't write much for them either without spoiling too much. I can say at least that the characters here are intriguing and believable, and that their secrets and complexities are revealed at a tantalizing, measured pace.

The setting - a communist, highly patriarchal society is also consistent and realistic, and influences the characters' fate a great deal. I live in a post-communist country, and while I'm too young to have a personal experience of it, the manga seems scarily consistent with what older people have told me about it. I'm not sure if the setting will resonate the same way with Western-European or American readers, though, who might find it too removed from their own experiences.

All that said, I can't say I enjoyed this manga, exactly. I respect it and I think it has great merit as a story, but the implications of the ending were too cynical for me. I prefer my psychological horror with a bit more hope.

Overall, provided you like your fiction unflinchingly dark, and don't mind wracking your brain a bit to keep up with events, this is very much worth the read.