REVIEW: The Housekeeper and the Professor - Yoko Ogawa

• Year first released:  2003 (Japanese), 2009 (English)
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780312427801
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Picador
• My rating (out of 5):  5

I'm sure you've heard it said before - or perhaps even said it yourself - that "either you're good at English, or you're good at math." I've never felt this way - I've always enjoyed both quite a bit. In fact, in those rare occasions when I come across a combination of the two - say, a novel which uses mathematics as an important motif - chances are quite decent that I'm going to be spellbound by the book.

This was certainly the case with PopCo by Scarlett Thomas, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, and Momo by Michael Ende.

This is also exactly what happened with The Housekeeper and the Professor. With it, Ogawa creates what is easily one of the most charming novels I've come across (in a very long time, if not ever), using a simple story peppered with complicated (but well-explained) mathematics, to show us the relationship between the two nameless main characters: an elderly, retired professor of mathematics who suffers from a unique form of dementia, and his newest housekeeper.

The professor's dementia plays a key role in how the plot and the characters develop. After a traumatic car accident over thirty years ago, he can no longer create new memories. Instead, every eighty minutes his short-term memory "resets," so to speak. (You might be reminded of the movie 50 First Dates. Yes, Housekeeper employs a similar trope, but in a significantly more mature, wonderful manner.)

To the professor, everything is mathematical. Upon first meeting his new housekeeper, one of the first questions he asks is her shoe size. Later it's her birthday. Another time it's her height at birth. And all of these, he twists into formulas, explains to her why the numbers are each elegant in their own way, and how everything in life connects more than we realize.

It's a word that Ogawa uses often all throughout the book - "elegant" - which is a perfect description of mathematics, and a perfect description of the book. There's a thread of beauty which courses all throughout the book, whether it's in the professor's mathematical explanations, his metaphors, even the way the narrator (the housekeeper) weaves in and out of chronology to tell her story.

Housekeeper pulses with a profound sense of wonder, but perhaps the most miraculous element of all is that this wonder never dips into the surreal or the otherworldly. Ogawa shows the beauty in coincidence, in numbers, in baseball games and birthday parties and post-it notes. Much like I said in my review of Good Morning, Midnight almost a year ago, Housekeeper doesn't trouble itself with focusing on the negative side of reality. Though of course the book has its tension and conflicts, it is more about the wonder, the beauty, the positivity - without ever overstepping its bounds, sugar-coating its hardships, or dipping its toes into the too-good-to-be-true. It is, instead, a real, earthy novel which knows what it wants to tell us, and tells us in the most graceful way possible.

Throughout the book, we realize that the professor is exactly right: everything in life is mathematical - we just aren't as consistently, acutely aware of it as is the professor. And, if everything is mathematical, then by extension, everything is full of beauty and wonder as well.

Elegant, indeed.

REVIEW: Confessions - Kanae Minato

• Year first released:  2014
• ISBN of the edition I read:  0316200921
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Little, Brown and Company
• My rating (out of 5):  4

10 or 11 years ago, I read The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. It was a fantastic mystery (regarding a stolen gemstone) told from the perspectives of 11 different people involved in the affair. The first - and longest - part of the book sets up the entire scenario and introduces us to all the key characters. From there, we're given more and more details, ideas, and points of view from each of the other characters, until the final part, which ties everything together and brings us the ultimate solution.

Minato's much more recent Confessions has a similar setup:

Part 1 introduces us to the underlying crime (this time, the tragic, heartless murder of a 4-year-old girl) which propels the story as a whole. Each of the subsequent parts then show us a different character's perspective on the matter, before arriving at its downright chilling ending.

Unlike The Moonstone, though, the flow to Minato's story is constantly pulling us forward. We're actually presented most of the details - and even the culprit - by the end of Part 1 - the first 50 pages of the book. Then, rather than revisit the same depressing scene over and over again with each new character's perspective, we're shown the aftermath that each character faces in response to the initial murder.

It's a deliberate, clever approach that works on several levels. Once you realize that you already know the answer to the crime only a fifth of the way into the book, you will inevitably wonder, Where could the story go from here? Isn't it already finished? Indeed, it is not - not by a long shot.

The layers that each new character adds to the story unfold in a highly intricate fashion, leaving us to wonder what is really at the heart behind everything. The facts we thought we knew become distorted. We discover that the motives aren't what we had originally been told. And, importantly, we may not have seen the last of the crimes... [no spoilers, though]

We might say that Confessions is a mystery in reverse. Rather than the book merely being about trying to solve the murder at the beginning, we already know who the murderer is and how the deed was performed. What matters here is the spiral, the after effects, all of which eventually point to the book's highly effective, disturbing, shocking final page. (Pleasingly, the final twist of the book is on the very last page - you do yourself a disservice if you stop reading the book at any point before then.)

Full of deep characters, a plot that twists with almost every page, and an intriguing look at justice - what it really is and looks like, how it is achieved, who is responsible for enacting it, etc. - Confessions is one of the best mysteries I've come across. I'll definitely be diving into Minato's next book, Penance, in due time.

REVIEW: Another Episode S/O - Yukito Ayatsuji

• Year first released:  2016
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780316312318
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Yen Press
• My rating (out of 5):  3

You might remember from my October review of Another that I was quite smitten with it. (I gave it a 4.5 - pretty dang great, really.) One thing I said about it was, "Every step of the way, the story continually evolves - whether subtly or overtly - and is jam-packed with at least a dozen hefty twists, each of which alters the trajectory of the plot in unpredictable ways."

You can imagine, then, that I had rather high hopes for this side-story novella, Another: Episode S. Ultimately, these might have set me up for a bit of disappointment. 

Episode S wasn't bad. It wasn't anything particularly special, though - at least not compared to its counterpart. Here we have a ghost story about the ghost of a man trying to figure out how he died, why, and where his body is. (He is under the impression that he can't move on from this world until he finds his corpse so that he can get a proper burial.) It's kind of straightforward stuff, really, nothing groundbreaking (up until the end, at least).

I discovered an interesting concept after finishing the book, though:

There were several things about the plot development that bothered me. Frankly, I thought they were rather lazy on Ayatsuji's part, even a bit of a stretch. It felt as though Ayatsuji was taking the easy way out, relying too much on coincidence to move the story along. Curiously, though, once I hit the twist ending - which was quite sizable and highly intriguing, by the way - I realized that many of the things which bothered me along the way were actually intentional, and weren't as lazy or stretchy as I had thought. 

This said, on the one hand, I'd like to say that this revelation washes away the bad taste of that perceived laziness. It was certainly a worthwhile ending which I didn't see coming, and which made sense of the apparent conveniences along the way. Then again, I spent 200 pages with those things. And even though they were justified in the end, so to speak, that's still 200 pages of a bad taste. It's not necessarily so easy to gloss over that, even with a great finale. 

Some people say the end justifies the means. I think Episode S is proof that this isn't always true.

If I look at Episode S as a side story to add a little more weight to the world of Another, it's interesting enough. Considering how much I loved the first novel, I was glad to have the chance to spend more time in the universe. Episode S is absolutely not a starting point for the universe, though, and it won't win over anyone who wasn't impressed with the first book - it's just a nice little filler to flesh out the world a bit more.

(A couple minor, non-review notes, by the way:

One of the reasons Episode S is not a starting point for the world of Another is because it gives away several of the twists from the first book. If you're interested in the world, PLEASE read Another first.

Also, you might have noticed the title of the book also mentions Episode O, which I didn't comment on in this review. Episode O is a very short manga included in the back pages of the book, about which there's not much to say. It doesn't have much of a plot on its own - it's really just meant to highlight a tiny little bit of backstory from the original novel, and would be completely meaningless if you haven't read the original.)

REVIEW: The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro

• Year first released:   2015
• ISBN of the edition I read:  978-0307271037
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Knopf
• My rating (out of 5):  3.5

Considering that Ishiguro just won the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature, it seemed to me that it was high time to read one of his books. And based on the fact that Pico Iyer (another author whom I respect) referred to The Buried Giant as "invincible," this seemed like a grand place to start.

It was and it wasn't, I guess. There was plenty in Buried to like, but "invincible" is certainly too strong of a word. 

Though it's most accurate to call Buried a fantasy, that label would likely give one the wrong impression. Yes, there are knights in it. Yes, there's a dragon that must be slain. There are several references to Merlin (and magic generally), and everything about it feels very medieval. If we can go a bit deeper than these elements, though, Buried is actually more like a drama which happens to include some fantasy tropes. 

The crux of the plot rests on an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice, who decide that it's time to visit their son in a faraway village. And so they set out on a journey to find him, only to come across various adventures and misadventures along the way. But their adventure is superficial; the truer themes of the book are about familial bonds, the weight of memory, sacrifice, the things we hold on to. 

These are all important ideas, and they're handled exceedingly well in Buried. Even if some of the events and conversations feel a little more metaphorical than they need to be, there's really no mistaking the larger themes and ideas that Ishiguro wants us to garner from his book. In fact, I will happily claim that Ishiguro handles the use of themes more deftly than most authors today - a major plus, to be sure (and, I suspect, one of the reasons he won the Nobel Prize).

Throughout their adventure, there is a litany of smaller stories which Axl and Beatrice either experience first-hand or else hear of from other characters, which all somehow relate to the overarching narrative. It's in these smaller stories that many of the themes truly shine. It's also in these, though, where a few of the book's largest stumbles reside.

Each of these stories - the story of the mysterious boatman and the woman with the rabbits, the adventure at the abbey, and the confrontation with the dragon Querig, to name a few - are interesting enough, and add a particular weight to Buried. The connections between them, though, is a bit lackadaisical. Each of these subplots holds water on its own, but when thrown into the overall plot, just how separate they really are begins to shine through.

For example, I highly enjoyed the episode in the abbey (which comprised about one-fifth of the book). It was disturbing, well-paced, and full of surprises and concepts that made it a fantastic little story. Its connections to the plot as a whole, though, felt a bit too loose to really justify its inclusion. Yes, the abbey was a day in Axl and Beatrice's adventure, but...why was it in their adventure at all? As a reader, the fact that I wonder why this episode happened doesn't sit right with me. 

This is unfortunate, because, again, the whole episode was great - probably one of my favorite parts of the book. This doesn't necessarily mean it belonged in the book, though.

So it is that the parts of The Buried Giant are each impressive on their own, and certainly carry a strong gravitas to them. Unfortunately, the gravity of everything that isn't such a subplot doesn't quite hold them all together, though.

REVIEW: Doubt (vols. 1 and 2) - Yoshiki Tonogai

• Year first released:  2013
• ISBNs of the editions I read:  9780316245302 and 9780316245319
• Publisher of the editions I read: Yen Press
• My rating (out of 5):  4

Doubt begins normally enough: a group of high-schoolers who play an online game together - Rabbit Doubt - decide to meet up in-person for the first time. They have a good evening together shopping and eating and singing karaoke, and then suddenly wake up in a creepy, abandoned warehouse with bar code tattoos, the corpse of one of them hanging from the rafters, and the idea that they have to kill one other to flush out the murderer. 

I guess I should say: Doubt begins normally enough...if you're a Saw movie or an Agatha Christie novel.

I loved the premise. It's not really a spoiler to say that, of course, each of the kids has his (or her) own secrets he's hiding which sure makes him seem to be the guilty one. These secrets and red herrings roll out over the course of the books - as the corpses quickly stack up - until the person behind the game is finally revealed. 

There's a very Agatha-Christie-like conceit to the entire set up (think especially of And Then There Were None) which Tonogai pulls off brilliantly, and without making it feel as though he's simply rehashing the ground she started nearly 80 years ago.

The art, too (which Tonogai himself does) is fantastic. He moves deftly between scenes of warmth and humanity, and scenes of shocking violence (and/or the aftereffects of it). Doubt certainly isn't for the faint of heart, though it never comes close to crossing into grind territory - this is definitely a thriller, through and through, with nothing gratuitous or supernatural in play. There is plenty of violence and gore throughout, but it is always meaningful to the story as a whole.

The premise (of high-schoolers being trapped together in an abandoned building to play a twisted, murdery game) worked so well in Doubt that Tonogai repeated it almost exactly for his two other series, Judge and Secret. To his credit, he was careful to fill each series with a different host of secrets and clues, and even a different approach to who the game-maker is behind each. If you like any one of the three series, there's simply no way you won't like the other two. 

That said, though you're certain to like all three series, there's no getting around the fact that they all feel highly correlated, for better or worse. The twists and secrets are unique to each series, but the overall type of twists and secrets remains largely unchanged between the three (except, importantly, for who the ultimate villain is behind each - having read one won't give you any sort of clues or logical patterns that you can use to guess who the villain is in either of the other two).

Also, in reading just any one of them all of the characters look and feel distinct. When you begin in on another of the series, though, you'll quickly realize that these are basically the same personalities and quirks, just re-skinned and renamed for the next story. It's not so bad if you allow a gap between reading each of the three series, but a haze settles over them if you read them too closely together. 

It's an interesting idea, though: this recycling of personalities feels like a misstep on Tonogai's part - and yet, if I'm only reviewing one of the series for you (which, technically, I am), it's not as though it affects this one series on its own. This isn't a problem you will notice by only reading Doubt (or only Judge, or only Secret). I suppose, then, it's more of a warning for you if you decide to keep up with Tonogai beyond just this one series, rather than something I can fairly hold against just this one series.

These small inconsistencies (actually, ironically, I suppose I should say these small consistencies) don't keep Doubt from being what it attempts to be, though: a fun, solid, intricate thriller full of twists and personality, with interesting plotting and a clever ending. It has everything you could want from a manga thriller - and, I would venture, would be a good starting-off point if you're into thrillers but haven't yet approached the wonderful world of reading manga.

(Note: If these books sound familiar, I’ve actually already mentioned them once before - along with Judge and Secret - in my list of books to read if you’ve played certain games. Specifically, I mentioned that these books are great to read if you've played any of the three games in the Nonary Games series: 999, Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, and/or The Zero Time Dilemma.)

On Ryukishi07’s Higurashi: When They Cry Manga Series

You’ve guessed by now that I’m a fan of manga (though I haven’t yet reviewed any for you). I’m actually a bit picky about manga, though. There’s a lot to like - and a lot to not like - in the average manga.

The 27-volume Higurashi series is no exception: it falls into some of the same pitfalls as many other manga series. Certainly it isn’t perfect. Despite this, though, it’s easily my favorite series (though not my favorite single-volume manga). And, since it’s such a great example of a psychological horror series, it’s finally time to talk about it.

Though the overall plot, for what it is, is highly fascinating - and I could easily rave about it for awhile - what actually stands out to me the most is the way the entire story is arranged. Throughout the 27 books, we're given an abundance of pieces that all point at the one, ultimate truth of the Higurashi universe. Along the way, though, the story continually "resets," so to speak, in a sort of give-and-take format.

Sounds odd, I'm sure. And until you get the hang of how the series works, it can be quite confusing at first. I can only explain so much without getting into spoiler territory, but I'll do what I can - the arrangement is worth discussing (since it's probably the most clever aspect of the entire series).

In order to explain the setup for you, let's start with a couple of the book covers:

 

The most obvious difference between the two are that the first one (which is the cover to volume 1) has a black background, and the second (the cover to volume 11), a white. This fact is important.

The series is separated into smaller sets of books called "arcs" - volumes 1 and 2 comprise an arc, 3 and 4, etc. (The arcs are anywhere from two - four books long each, with a couple single-arc exceptions.)

The black-backed arcs are known as the "Question Arcs" and the white-background ones are the "Answer Arcs." And, importantly, there's a direct correlation between a Question Arc and its Answer Arc. You read through all of the Questions first, before diving in to the Answers - which are continuations of their accompanying Questions.

(Each new arc is where the plot "resets," as I mentioned. Each takes you back to the very beginning of the ordeal to show you a new - and often contradictory - angle to the overarching story.)

As for the two books I showed above: the black is volume 1 of the Abducted by Demons Arc (again, a Question Arc), and the white is the first volume of the Eye Opening Arc - the Answer to the Abducted by Demons Arc.

Whew. Sound confusing? Probably. Once you have the pieces in front of you, though (and especially once you finally start in on the Answers), everything becomes much more clear.

- much more clear, that is, and absolutely phenomenal.

The series paints (and repaints, and repaints...) an incredible picture of the horrifying incidents in a rural Japanese village. All throughout, Ryukishi07 maintains a deeply unsettling, disturbing atmosphere that is psychologically gripping. Both the imagery and the plot twists are downright shocking, driving all the way to the incredible finale which will leave you in horror and disbelief and utter confusion until the penultimate volume, when the deepest truth is finally laid bare. You'll be shocked. More, you'll be electrified. (At least I was, and if you enjoy even the faintest whiffs of Japanese horror, you certainly will be too.)

...yeah, I know: sounds amazing, right?

It truly is.

REVIEW: Another - Yukito Ayatsuji

• Year first published:  2009 (Japanese), 2014 (English)
• ISBN of the edition I read:  0316339105
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Yen On
• My rating (out of 5):  4.5

Somehow, despite having already seen the anime of Another AND having read the manga version, I had completely forgotten the major twist at the end of the story. Granted, it's been a couple years, but even still...how could I have forgotten something that big?

Whatever the reason for this, it worked out perfectly. Reading this novel version of the story (which actually came before the anime and manga) I was just as surprised by the twist ending as I was when I first experienced the story in those other formats. I mean that literally - even the very sentence before the big reveal, I still couldn't remember/piece together/guess the ultimate twist. And considering how crazy of a finale it is, this was definitely ideal.

Much like I said of The Tokyo Zodiac Murders in my review of it last week, "the journey matters here, too." In fact, as shocking as the ending was to Another, I would argue that it wasn't even the best part of the book. Brilliant and great, yes - but not the best. 

For one thing, Another is exceptionally paced. Barely a page goes by without some sort of clue, image, or bit of dialogue that set my mind reeling, trying to figure out how it all fits in. Of course it's quite standard for a mystery/thriller/horror to often leave you questioning what is happening - those moments are often half the fun of the book. You read a new tidbit and try to fit it into your theory of what's really going on. In this vein, no book has made me ask nearly as many questions as Another. Every step of the way, the story continually evolves - whether subtly or overtly - and is jam-packed with at least a dozen hefty twists, each of which alters the trajectory of the plot in unpredictable ways. 

Perhaps the most fantastic element of Another, though, is how brazenly original the entire experience is. It starts out as a fairly typical, rural-Japanese-high-school, maybe-ghost/curse story, but very quickly - though subtly - begins to steer away from this. Rather, to be clear, I should specify that it steers away from the common tropes of this. (It still takes place in a rural Japanese high school, etc.) One can almost imagine that Ayatsuji began by saying, "How can I start with this common horror setup, but then completely turn it on its head?" At least, whether or not this was his thinking, it's precisely what he did. Importantly, he accomplished this while still giving us a smooth story that felt fully realized - never jarring, never far-fetched, always ten steps ahead of the reader.

If you want a highly unique, engaging psychological horror - and especially an Asian horror, which, as I discussed previously, tends to handle the psyche of horror better than American literature - Another is easily one of the best out there. I can't imagine I'd actually forget the ending yet again, but I'm sure I'll still be reading it again anyway.

(And, for what it's worth, the manga and the anime versions are absolutely first-rate as well - I'd happily give a 4.5 to all three formats of the story.)

REVIEW: The Strange Library - Haruki Murakami

• Year first released:  2005 (Japanese), 2014 (English)
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780385354301
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• My rating (out of 5):  4

Why this book took nine years to hit our shores, I'll never know. Maybe we just weren't ready for it. In fact, even though I've loved Japanese literature for quite some time now, I think I may not have been ready for The Strange Library until recently.

To be sure, The Strange Library is an aptly named book. It is mighty strange, indeed. A young boy goes to the library - his normal, everyday library - to return a couple books when he quickly gets tricked into becoming a prisoner in the library's deep, labyrinthine basement. Oh, and one of his jailers is perpetually dressed like a sheep but fries up some amazing donuts. So. There's that, I guess.

Going into it, you might miss the fact (as I did at first) that this is actually a children's book (Murakami's only children's book, as far as I know). Once that realization hit me, the book suddenly took on a whole new hue. Before that moment, I was beginning to dread having spent $18 on this 96-page book which is half pictures. (Highly nonsensical pictures, mind you.) Once I was able to absorb the book as a whole, though (which only took about half an hour, cover to cover), I realized that I was in the presence of greatness.

There's certainly something deeply metaphorical going on throughout the book. And I'll be the first to admit that at least half of it is completely lost on me. Sometimes this is a hindrance to understanding and appreciating the story. Sometimes, though, just being in the presence of - what we assume is - an elaborate metaphor is reason enough to enjoy the journey. The Strange Library fits snuggly into this second category.

Why the sheep outfit? Why the donuts? What's with the tax records of the Ottoman Empire? I have no idea. But it all comes together in a magical, whimsical package.

Again, considering that this is a children's book, surely the metaphor - whatever it is - will be missed by most. If we can take it as a Tim Burton-esque, creepy-with-a-touch-of-adorable story, though, then The Strange Library is a tightly-bound, quirky, wonderful nightmare that I am certain I will come back to repeatedly - and, in fact, will probably share with my five-year-old son this Halloween season.

REVIEW: The Tokyo Zodiac Murders - Soji Shimada

• Year first released:  1981 
• ISBN of the edition I read:  1782271384
• Publisher of the edition I read: Pushkin Vertigo
• My rating (out of 5):  4

On page 231 (out of 316) of this serial-killer murder mystery, Shimada breaks the fourth wall and interrupts his own book. He says, in part:

All of the information required to solve the mystery is now in your hands, and, in fact, the crucial hint has been provided already. ... Let me throw down the gauntlet: I challenge you to solve the mystery before the final chapters!

What a fantastic, fun invitation. And it’s okay by me.

At this point, I set the book aside for a week. Once I proceed on to the next page, there’s no going back. You can’t unread things.

One week later, when I came back to Zodiac again, I was precisely zero percent closer to having figured out even the first thing about the solution to the murders.

This is one thing I love about Zodiac. The final solution to the crime was, quite simply, cosmic. Unlike The Devotion of Suspect X, though, (another Asian mystery which I read and reviewed a few weeks ago here), Zodiac is not merely a novel about its finale. Yes, the final act is the best part, but the journey matters here, too.

For one, it matters in the way I’ve already described: the author actually directly challenges us to figure out the case before the characters. Even beyond this element, though, we are still left with excellent pacing (at least once you finish the first part of the book, which is a bit of an overly-long exposition about the crime, more than it is actual plot), an ingenious crime, and a secondary character who is enjoyable and attention-grabbing throughout (even if he does make fun of Sherlock Homes, which is only barely forgivable).

All of this perhaps sounds as though I am building up to a stellar rating. And I wish I could say that I am. There is a sizable flaw, though, which I can’t really ignore:

Zodiac is the perfect example of the translation leaving us to wonder who is to blame for the stiff style of writing. Is it Shimada’s form which is rigid, or Ross and Shika Mackenzie’s translation? As I don’t speak Japanese, I can’t say. (And, as I explained in my blog The Art of Translation, pt. 3, I try very hard not to blame the author directly for this.)

Nevertheless, we have a rather colorless set of words and sentences to tell us a very colorful story, which can be somewhat distracting. 

This rigidity is worth forgiving, though, so that we can experience a truly unique mystery - and incredible payout - that serves as one of the highest examples of the genre.

On Koji Suzuki's Ring Hexalogy

Remember Gore Verbinski’s 2002 horror movie The Ring (starring Naomi Watts)?

Well I don’t, because I fell asleep halfway through. 

Luckily, though, this remake of the 1998 Japanese movie Ringu at least introduced us in the West to what is actually a great series of Japanese horror stories. (In fact, we can basically thank Verbinski for starting the Japanese horror craze on our shores altogether.) 

Before even the Japanese film Ringu, though, was the 1991 Koji Suzuki novel of the same name. The book was immensely popular (rightly so) and spawned what is - at least so far - a hexalogy of books:

Ring

Spiral

Loop 

Birthday (a collection of three novellas)

S*
Tide*

(As S and Tide have not yet been translated into English, I haven't read/can't discuss them. But S is finally getting its US release in just a couple months!)

If you've seen any of the movies in the series - whether any of the five Japanese movies or four American - you're probably at least mildly familiar with the overall trope:

A mysterious video tape appears, filled with eerie, disturbing images. At the end of the tape is a message - something to the effect of "You will die in seven days, if you don't..." But of course the end of the tape cuts off, and you don't really know what you're supposed to do to avoid being murdered. Well shucks.

Oddly, this is more or less the basic premise of all of the movies...and yet only the first novel. 

Much like the movie sequels, I had expected the second book, Spiral, to continue on the mystery of the killer video tape. And yet, to my pleasant (if morbid) surprise, Spiral ended up taking the story in a wildly different direction. Weird that the movies (and even the five-part manga series, which I haven't yet mentioned) all basically ignored the overall story from this point onward.

Ring is a stylish, incredibly inventive psychological horror. (See The Four Main Types of Horror for a reminder, if you need.) It features the dreadful mood and tension so predominant in the genre, and a terrifying mystery that unravels like a slow poison - contrasting wonderfully with the protagonist's veritable race against the clock. (And, by the way, if you haven't seen the movies nor had the ending ruined for you, the book really is highly clever and surprising.) 

Spiral, though, gives us half a psychological horror, but smoothly moves the book into more of a body horror. Clever transition, that. Instead of the book being all about a mysterious, deadly, supernatural object, we now have a scientific/medical approach to the entire ordeal. 

Equally clever is how the third book, Loop, takes the body horror of Spiral, then moves the series in the direction of sci-fi. Here, many of the scarier elements of the series are lost, but replaced with what is a truly mind-blowing coup d'etat compared to everything else in the series. 

(And, lest I forget: Birthday mostly goes back to the psychological brand of horror, which makes sense, considering that two of the three novellas in it are prequels to Ring.)

It's a smooth trick that Suzuki plays on us throughout the series, morphing the genre each step of the way.

More than even this unique genre-shift, though, is the way Suzuki plays with everything we think we know about the universe of Ring:

Most stories give us at least some sort of a resolve by the end. Even if it's not entirely complete, we generally have a good idea of the how and the why behind everything. 

Indeed, Ring basically unravels the history and secrets of the video tape by its final page, much as you'd expect would happen. And yet only a fraction of the way into Spiral, I found myself a bit dumbfounded, asking, "Wait - that's what's actually going on here?" What we discover in Spiral completely subverts what we learned in Ring.

It was a fantastic trick which I, at least, didn't see coming. 

Perhaps even more fantastic is that, by the end of Spiral, we realize what's really going on...but only until halfway through Loop, when we are doubly dumbfounded and doubly shocked to find out what's actually, really, for-reals-this-time going on. 

People often use the phrase "tour de force" when describing a book. I don't generally like the expression in this sense (one, because it's become highly overused, and two, because most books really aren't actually "tour de forces"), but I can think of no more appropriate book/series that has earned the label. 

The way the series evolves from Ring through Spiral and into Loop - in both the shifting genres, as well as the genius plot evolution - is nothing short of mind-bending. Give it a go.

Asian Horror v. American Horror

Really, this topic could easily be a book. And I don’t think I’m qualified to write that book. Despite this, there are plenty of observations I’ve made along the way – and things that make me tend to enjoy Asian Horror more than American – so there’s clearly something there worth discussing.

And, I hope it goes without saying that I’m speaking in broad strokes here – of course there are exceptions to the ideas I’m about to discuss. I’m sure there are plenty of Asian authors/film directors/video game designers who create their medium in a more “American” way, so to speak, and vice versa.

Aside from these exceptions, though, I tend to prefer horror media that comes out of Asia (especially Japan) more than that which comes from our own shores. Why is this? 

The easiest way to answer this question is to begin with my earlier post The Four (Main) Types of Horror. The last of the four sub-genres that I discussed there - and the one I identified as being my favorite - is Psychological Horror. 

That said, the most direct way I can explain why I enjoy Asian Horror more than American is to say this: 

Asian Horror tends to be more psychological than American. 

It's really as simple as that. 

If you think about the horror/thriller media that is produced in the U.S., you often see tales of gratuitous serial killers; violent monsters; evil, megalithic corporations; etc. We have Stephen King, the Hannibal Lecter series, and the Saw movies. 

To sum it all up - admittedly in a very general way - we tend to produce highly violent clashes of external, opposing forces, which are most often solved by the use of power. In a word, our horror is often

BIG 

Of course all of this has its place. Sometimes, this sort of media is exactly what I'm looking for. Though the Resident Evil movies don't contain a fraction of the quality of their video game counterparts (their Asian-made video game counterparts, I should add), dang it if I don't have a blast watching them anyway. (Guilty pleasures, for sure.)

Asian horror, though, tends to focus much less on these bombastic power plays and more on the psyches of its key players. Gone are the enormous explosions, set pieces, and over-the-top violence, all replaced by the tiniest details that add up to an overwhelming sense of dread. In a word, Asian horror is often very 

small

- in all the right ways, though.

Rather than Asian horror focusing on an archetypal hero (or group of heroes), we are usually given an everyday person who must wrestle with his or her own demons just as much as - in fact, usually more than - whatever dark force is at the center of the plot. Of course seeing Bruce Willis kick @$$ is fun, but there's something much more psychologically, intrinsically gratifying in seeing someone overcome their fears and their past and their inner darkness.

We might even say that American horror tends to be like a huge painting, full of color and gunfire and monsters, which we can absorb all at once. Even before finishing it, we can already see that the hero(es) will overcome The Evil - which is always Someone/Something Else.

Contrasted to this, Asian horror tends to be more of a puzzle, the gray-shaded pieces of which we're only handed one at a time, each of which ratchets up the tension more and more all the way up through the end, when we ultimately realize that this was never a painting, nor a Something Else - it was always a mirror. 

Guilty Pleasures, pt. 1.5 / REVIEW: DEATHNOTE: Another Note - The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases - NISIOISIN

• Year first released:  2006 (Japanese), 2008 (English)
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9781421518831
• Publisher of the edition I read: VIZ Media LLC
• My rating (out of 5): 4.5-ish. or maybe 2ish. hmm... 

Now I want to explain to you one of the reasons I’ve been thinking about guilty pleasures recently:

Just last week, I read the Japanese light novel DEATHNOTE: Another Note - The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases by NISIOISIN. As usual, after reading it, I sat down to write a review of it for you. I found that I was rather stuck, though.

First of all, I absolutely LOVED the book. But when I tried to discuss the book’s style, I had to admit that it’s, frankly, pretty badly written. (I believe that some of this was bad translation, but definitely not all of it.*) It had a constantly shifting POV that was more than a little distracting. To add to this, the first-person narrator played a rather confusing role in the story, one that I don’t think I can definitively explain for you. This is largely because I don’t think I fully understood who the narrator was supposed to be – in fact, to be even more blunt, it felt like the author made a mistake in who the narrator, as a character, is in the overall DEATHNOTE universe. Oops. 

Perhaps, then, I loved the book because it had such great content (even though the form was bad) …right?

Well, partly yes. The plot was great, and had a killer ending. (No pun intended – I mean, it’s a serial-killer mystery, after all.) But what I certainly loved most about the book was the character L (who you’ll know if you’ve read the DEATHNOTE manga or seen the corresponding anime). Revisiting his character – and in prose, instead of only manga or anime form – was an absolute delight. He’s every bit as fantastic and hilarious and genius here as he was in the manga/anime. Very possibly my favorite character to have come out of the genre as a whole.

So then. When I tried to give a numerical score to the book, I wanted to give it a 4.5.

I realized, though, that this score is actually rather misleading. This book doesn’t really deserve a 4.5, for many of the reasons I already described (amongst several others). 

Yet I totally loved the book. It was an absolute blast for me. And so calling it anything less than a 4.5 feels wrong, too.

It turns out that the book is great, but it's not actually good.

Weird, I know.

Another Note was not high-quality. But dang it if it wasn’t one of the funnest books I’ve read recently – and, therefore, worth every minute I spent with it.**

* * * 

*This is actually the second book I've read by NISIOISIN in the past couple weeks. Each had a different translator. Both translations were fine - nothing entirely remarkable or entirely egregious - but overall I think the other book, Decapitation, flowed a little better as far as the translation is concerned.

**By the way, if you’re thinking of reading this book, it’s highly advisable that you read the original DEATHNOTE manga or watch the anime first. This is because:

1. Even though this book is a prequel to the manga/anime series, it actually contains spoilers for the series. 
2. The series is a better “jumping-off-point” to getting a grasp on L’s character. This book itself doesn’t do much of anything to help you understand his personality; it’s better to come to the book with a good feel for it already. (And, again, since L is my favorite part of the book, approaching the manga/anime first will almost certainly increase your enjoyment of this book.)

All that said, if you are familiar with the tropes of DEATHNOTE and are considering this book: Yes. Absolutely. Read this - just know that it's not as "high-quality" as many other great books you could be reading. (In fact, I might even say it's not as "high-quality" as the manga itself, even though it's still totally worth it - especially if, like me, you realize how amazing L is.)

REVIEW: Decapitation: The Blue Savant and the Nonsense User - NISIOISIN

• Year first released:  2008 (Japanese), 2017 (this English translation)
• ISBN of the edition I read:  1945054212
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Vertical
• My rating (out of 5):  4

Looking at the cover of this book, it’d be very easy to form a quick judgment of it. It sure looks like one of those crazy Japanese cartoons, doesn’t it? – and, therefore, it must be for people who like all that that weird Japanese stuff, right?

Well…not really, no.

Yes, Decapitation is a Japanese “light novel” – basically a popular short novel. (The closest thing we produce here in the U.S. would probably be a mass-market paperback.) They don’t generally serve as examples of the highest quality of Japanese literature. And yes, very often, light novels are written that tie-in to manga.

This isn’t a book that’s necessarily targeted at teens, though, nor is it exclusively for people who are already into Japanese media. Instead, Decapitation is a locked-room mystery that is more likely to remind you of Agatha Christie than a comic. Technically, it takes place on an island off the coast of Japan, but there’s very little about the plot or the setting that feel particularly culturally exclusive (for better or worse).

A group of eight strangers – all geniuses – are summoned to an island palace on the whim of an incredibly wealthy and highly bored heiress. Soon enough, one of them ends up dead – decapitated, as you might guess from the book’s title – and, of course, everyone on the island is a suspect in this inventive, twisty novel.

Admittedly, the writing takes a small amount of adjusting to get into. I found myself a bit confused for the first 20 or 30 pages. It wasn’t that the setting or the action was hard to follow – everything was explained/displayed well enough – it was simply hard to understand exactly why things were being expressed in just this way. Wait…is this character speaking right now, or just thinking? Why are some of his thoughts in quotation marks, but not others? etc.

After that first small stretch, though, either it got better, or else I somehow acclimated – it’s hard to say which for sure. Either way, it stopped being of concern very shortly into the book.

Once I got past this small bump in the road at the beginning, the rest of the book came together rather nicely. Though the subject matter was serious (we’re talking about a murder mystery here, of course), NISIOISIN still managed to sprinkle in a healthy amount of levity, without being too obnoxious, cutesy, or out-of-left-field (all things I’ve noticed are sometimes a struggle in other manga and light novels). In fact, the overall tone of the book was fantastic - a definite highlight, all things considered.

The story moved along quickly, the characters were distinct (with the intentional exception of the triplets, of course), and the twists were enjoyable. I wasn’t as shocked by the ending as I’ve been by other similarly-themed novels, but, since Decapitation gives us more to enjoy than just an ending, this wasn’t particularly problematic or distracting. 

I highly enjoyed Decapitation and veritably raced through it. And, if you're at all a fan of mystery - especially one that's more quirky than most other stories in the genre - you probably will, too. 

REVIEW: The Stories of Ibis - Hiroshi Yamamoto

• Year first released:  2006 (Japan), 2010 (US)
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9781421534404
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Haikasoru
• My rating (out of 5): 4

When Ray Bradbury decided to pool a bunch of his already-published short stories together to give us a compilation, he picked 20-something of his stories that take place on Mars, gave them just a hint of an overarching story, and called it The Martian Chronicles. The problem with Chronicles is that it felt like exactly what it is: a bunch of disparate, older stories which Bradbury tried to tie together in a cohesive way. The stories are all good. The binding of them – the new frame story – was a mess, and didn't actually bring the pieces together in a meaningful way. 

The Stories of Ibis follows a similar structure: seven stories total, five of which were already published (two written newly for this book), with a narrative thread in between each that ties them all together.

Unlike The Martian Chronicles, though, Ibis comes together brilliantly. Reading through each of the stories, we can easily believe that each of them belongs in this collection, and that each of them actually holds weight in the frame story. Yamamoto accomplishes this through a deceptively simple means: rather that trying to pretend that each of the short stories is a literal, historical story for this universe, they are pieces of fiction which one character - an android named Ibis - tells to a human wanderer. Then, in between each telling, Ibis and the wanderer discuss the stories - their themes, their implications, how they would work (or not work) in their current reality. 

Is it cheating for Yamamoto to have approached it this way? Maybe. But it absolutely works. 

Each of the seven short stories – as well as the overarching thread – deals extensively with the theme of Artificial Intelligence: What is it really? Is it even worthwhile? Will we ever be able to create it? If so, will it be our undoing?

Yes, the topic of AI is one of the most oft-tread grounds in sci-fi. Despite this, Yamamoto’s humanistic approach and broad-reaching empathy give us a fresh perspective on the matter, with a plethora of insights - sometimes wonderful, sometimes tragic - along the way. 

Of course, as with any short story collection, some of the stories hold up better than others.

• The first story in the collection, The Universe In My Hands, is an intriguing beginning to Ibis' nights of storytelling, with a fun, meta- setup. 
• In its pure form, Black Hole Diver is probably my favorite of the collection, considering its beautiful imagery and philosophical depth. 
• The Day Shion Came (one of the two new stories) unfolds the most slowly, but about halfway through we realize that it's one of the most important pieces of the collection. 
• And, as might be expected, the final story, AI's Story (the other of the two new stories), displays the heaviest implications of the collection, tying all the pieces together in a moving, meaningful - and surprisingly optimistic - way.

Though I'm not often a fan of sci-fi, Ibis hit all the right notes for me. It is sci-fi in its most ideal form: here are stories with a purpose that wrestle with ideas beyond mere alien invasions and laser swords. Yamamoto has given me much to think about - more so than most other books I've read recently. 

REVIEW: Six Four - Hideo Yokoyama

• Year first released: 2012 (Japan), 2016 (UK), 2017 (US)
• ISBN of the edition I read: 978-1848665286 (I actually read the UK edition. The US edition is available here)
• Publisher of the edition I read: riverrun
• My rating (out of 5): 4

I have a small fear about trying to review Six Four: if I tell you what the book is, say, elementally, I worry that it won’t sound interesting to you. But considering that Six Four is actually great, I hope you’ll bear with me while I try to make this make sense to you…

Fourteen years ago, there was a kidnapping/ransom/murder (in that order, unfortunately). Still unsolved, you might have guessed. And, since the statute of limitations on this sort of crime ends at 15 years in Japan, the police force is giving it one final push before the perpetrator gets away, scotch-free, forever.

So it sounds like we have a crime drama, right? A mystery? Maybe a psychological thriller?

Well…not really, no.

More accurately, Six Four is a psychodrama masquerading as a crime drama. It is certainly mysterious. But, in a move that is wholly unique for the genre, the story isn’t really about trying to solve the crime.

Rather, our protagonist, Mikami, was recently transferred out of the Investigations Department and into Media Relations. Anymore, his job is to act as a liaison between the press and the police force. So it is that he’s running his own investigation, but, rather than trying to solve the crime on its own, he’s more interested in trying to figure out how all the pieces fit together, the role everyone played it the investigation 14 years ago, the elements that have gone unnoticed or unreported.

At its heart, we might say that Six Four is more about the office politics of the Japanese police department than it is about the solving of a crime.

Sounds boring, doesn’t it?

It’s not. It really isn’t.

This 632-page behemoth of a novel is a slow-burn, unfolding methodically, piece by piece, until its final exposé. Yes, there is a powerful twist at the ending – which certainly ratcheted up the tension for the final 100 or so pages – but the novel isn’t merely about the ending. It’s about the unfolding, the psychological drama that Mikami is desperately trying to navigate. There are betrayed loyalties everywhere we look, manipulations of the highest caliber, agents going rogue, and every other element that you could hope for in such a mystery.

It’s hard to comment on the pacing effectively. I admit, there are moments where the book can feel a bit slow. Despite this, though – and despite the fact that the book is over 600 pages – there really isn’t much in the book that isn’t worthwhile. Once we come to the end, we see that more of it mattered along the way than we could have realized all throughout. Yes, parts of the book are slow, but it is always succinct – a very unique, effective blend.

I’d also like to point out: I’ve read a fair amount of literature coming out of Asia. It can be quite hit-and-miss, of course, – particularly in translation, when it’s difficult to maintain the author’s original voice. That said, Six Four is easily the best-translated, and – to whatever extent this can be determined around the translation – the best-written book I’ve read from Japan. It is succinct and suspenseful without ever feeling formulaic or gimmicky. The prose is fluid, and – something that is highly important to me personally – the POV is never once betrayed.

If you have a fear of novels that run a bit long, I can understand your hesitation in Six Four. I can’t promise it’s for everyone. I’m pleased with the time I spent with it, though – in fact, more so than I had thought I would be going into it (which is saying more than it sounds like, since I sometimes shy away from books of the length). The slow-brood and the unique focus of the plot are fantastic additions to a genre that all too often falls stale.

REVIEW: The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino

• Year first released:  2005 (Japanese), 2011 (English)
• ISBN of the version I read:  978-1250002693
• Publisher of the version I read:  Minotaur Books
• My rating (out of 5):  2

The most important thing I can think to say about The Devotion of Suspect X is that it did a couple things very right and a couple things…well: not so right, to put it kindly.

Devotion is, essentially, a mind game between two equally brilliant men: the genius physics professor Yukawa, who occasionally helps his police-detective friend solve some of the trickier murder cases in the precinct; and math teacher Ishigami, an intimidating mastermind who seems to have missed his mark in life and is now, somehow, at the heart of a murder investigation.

Unlike most other mystery/crime novels, Devotion actually begins by showing us the murder, telling us exactly who did it and how it was done. The mystery at hand for us readers, then, is in the elaborate plot created by Ishigami to cover up the crime. It’s an unconventional approach for the genre, and a wonderful change-up. As the book progresses and every new lead or clue is discovered, each step of the way we wonder, Is Ishigami’s plan falling through the cracks, or is this, too, part of his master setup?

His plan, by the way, was truly clever. Just how far it goes is not something I will comment on; frankly, that’s the entire joy of the book. And, as you might surmise, the ending was wholly shocking and mind-blowing. I, at least, wasn’t even in the same galaxy of guessing the answer.

Here, though, is exactly where the book’s biggest problem lies.

Devotion suffers from what I sometimes refer to as the Sixth Sense Effect. Just saying that phrase, I’m sure you can guess exactly what I’m getting at: as the final act plays out in front of us and the whole truth is revealed, we realize we’ve just witnessed the most twisty twist that’s ever twisted in a movie. But in this case, the movie is the ending. The first 97 minutes of the movie are really just a prelude to the final 10. 

Which, unfortunately, makes the first 97 minutes rather dull.

So, too, with Devotion. Yukawa and Ishigami’s back-and-forth, cat-and-mouse game is a genuinely interesting, psychological treat. But every moment in which neither of them is on the page – and even a few moments when they are – I felt as though I was merely biding my time. Yes, the payout is incredible. But now that I know exactly what it is, there’s really no reason to tread this ground again.

That said, if this incredible twist is the most important thing to you and you’re willing to wade through 270 pages of prelude, then Devotion will likely be a delight for you. If you feel, though – as I usually do – that the journey is just as important (or even more important) than the destination, then Devotion might not quite be your thing.