Bruna
I am kind of over the whole “these non-believers are going to learn that evil is real and demons exist (and thus the Church/God is real) “ plotline. At best it is a tired cliche and at worst it is just religious propaganda... The book had potential and was decently written, but it devolves into a trope fest by the end of it.
Also, I hope the author has a Sicilian background as there were A LOT of comments saying Sicilians are X and Y which will be even iffier if the author is just regurgitanting stereotypes...
The ‘I am a murderer and am going to murder you' sexual foreplay between the podcaster and the main suspect is the cringiest thing I have read all year, if not decade. The main character in this publishes erotica under a pseudonym, and I can't help but think that this is what this writer wants to be writing instead of a crime thriller.
This is not a terrible book, and there is certainly an audience for it that might appreciate it much more than I did. The problem is that this is not what it is sold as. There really is no thriller or mystery element. It is just a very long book about the societal pressures Japanese people face and, in a way, how to overcome them.
The ‘murderer' is not even a murderer. And no matter what her sentence in the book or what the MC says, she is not responsible for anyone's death. If she is a murderer, so is everyone who has ended a relationship that isn't working anymore. And the fact that the main character decides she is guilty even after knowing the truth (that she didn't push, drown, or poison anyone), she simply dated men who couldn't freaking function by themselves and went off the rails once she stopped mommying them. It is especially idiotic coming from the MC, who has managed to overcome the guilt of causing her father's death by not being by his side after he divorced her mom.
If the book had been sold for what it is, about characters struggling to fit in, public shaming, saving face, loneliness, shame, etc.—then that's fair enough, but they are marketing it as something that it isn't. So, it was a complete slog for me and I really would not have even picked it up if they had been honest about what the book is really about.
Not sure what I feel about this book in general, but just a quick note to say that one of the characters say they can see why someone was sexually abused as a child because they are a “beautiful freak”. The character that says this is a normal person and not written as an asshole/evil character, so I am not really sure what to make of that. Totally uncalled for and frankly disgusting.
This book is a subtle as a sledgehammer to your face. Why bother coming up with a haunted house as a metaphor if you are just going to spell everything out anyway. The characters are all caricatures and everything thay happens is so on the nose. For example there is a TERF who feels unsafe with transexual women being in the bathroom and she gives a speech about it than on the same day she gets as assaulted by a lesbian woman in the bathroom. We get it everybody can be a rapist and I agree bathrooms should be gender neutral, however the whole situation is a bit too convenient, like an after-school special. Anyway I was really looking forward to it but this would have worked better as a nonfiction essay.
Illustrations were very good as usual and, as expected, creepy and beautiful. The plot however was atrocious. There is SO much gratuitous sex, including rape of children (This main character is so unexplainably irresistible that both women and men cannot resist him even as a child). All women are magically drawn to the main character and keep dying tragically because of this spineless asshole. There are no redeeming qualities to the graphic novel, other than the illustrations. This is based on a novel and I don't know how closely it follows it, but if it is even remotely similar, I will stay away from it....I have enjoyed most of what I read from Junji Ito in the past and so I bought and finished reading this, but it was definitely not worth it.
Main character falls instantly in love with a random woman for no reason. He also has a young daughter.
Character then proceeds to make stupid decisions, leading to him being entangled in a cult that sacrifices and eats 6 year old girls for some shoddy reason. He apparently accepts this as he immediately has sex with this woman - who is part of the cult and he loves SO much for no reason - even after finding out that they kill and eat children. I don't know what happens next because at that point I stopped reading, but I am going to guess it entails this main character sacrificing his 5 year old daughter to some cult because he LOVES this woman who believes in some cult nonsense. (Or at least attempting to before the get stopped.)
This is one of the dumbest plots I have ever encountered in a horror book.... and that is saying a lot.
This book was entertaining at first, but then it got progressively worse and more unlikely. The characters are all paper thin and cliché. The fat one, the jock, the nerd, and a very textbook description of a psycho.
What is the likelihood that you are both stuck with someone who escaped a facility carrying a deadly and incurable parasite and a psycho at the same time? Also, Shelly's character was highly annoying, basically a caricature of a psycho who gets hard ons for drowning kittens. And by the way, I do NOT need to hear about a child's erection, thank you. And what was that I am a father, I need to take care of my worm children shtick? Makes no sense considering it had been established that he gives zero fucks about anyone or anything being a psychopath and all that.Also the ending was very 'uh look at this twist that makes no sense, the horror is not over tun tun tun' that horror movies love so much.
All in all, it just feels like the author combined several ‘scary' things and put them in a contained space (the island) like an offcut of Cabin in The Woods. It was completely cartoonish and unrealistic, thus undermining anything of value that it might have had to say about boys stuck in a dire situation and isolated from civilisation (as in Lord of the Flies).
This book was fun and entertaining, it would be 10x better without the juvenile humour and over emphasis on sex and/or how sexually attractive a character is, boobs, balls and etc.
Also, on a minor note, the main character is ‘raven haired' and ‘pale', how completely original.
Having said that, I might give the other books in the series a try as I am a bit curious.
The most interesting parts of this book are the introduction and appendix about the life of Lafcadio Hearn. The short stories, however, are quite formulaic, repetitive and written in a very simplistic style. It is culturally interesting to see what a Japanese ghost story consists of, but in general, they are neither scary, nor particularly good. Most of the stories consist of an attractive ghost woman and a man who doesn't realise that she is a ghost until they do for some reason or other. There is a lot about reincarnation as well, which means any ghost/death is automatically a lot less scary and impactful. I was expecting more yokai, more variety, but most stories blend into each other.
I was listening to this on audiobook and I actually had to hear some stories several times, because they were so short, vague and unmemorable that I wasn't sure I had missed something along the way and/or couldn't remember them 2 days later.
I can't fault the publisher for publishing this book, it is of historical interest, but none of these stories stand on their own, unfortunately.
This is the second book I've read this year. I hope it is the worst book I read all year or in any year. I bought it because I am interested in reading Japanese authors and it was reissued past October with a lovely cover and ‘‘selected'' as a classic by Penguin. What a mistake.
I am not sure how this book got any praise. Though it starts well and is interesting in some ways, it descends into vile nonsense, which I will describe in detail after a spoiler tag below. But I really wish I had read some of the reviews here first before ever reading this book. It is not only not worth reading, I actually feel worse for having read it.
Now, with some things that are not spoilers and are just completely inaccurate and to me quite annoying, since I can't believe this got through an editor and copy editor and this is, again, a new reissue of the book! I don't think anyone bothered to reread the manuscript.... I can't possibly speak for the things regarding Japan (and if there are anything like the Brazilian references, you shouldn't trust any word you read), but every mention of Brazil in this book contained a mistake (and it gets mentioned now and then due to a subplot involving Brazilian immigrants in the factory). So here are the most jarring ones:
1. It is São Paulo. P-A-U-L-O. Not São Paolo as it is written 499 times.
2. It is feijoada. Not fejioda. I am not sure why anyone would write out a word they don't know without double checking it! There are so many people who could have seen this in the editing process.
3. Shoro. I am not sure what this is, but it was in the same sentence as fejioda and it is a smell the character misses. This is not a word in Portuguese and it couldn't be, as we don't use ‘sh'.
And, of course, any other depiction of Brazil and Brazilians is filled with prejudice and cliches, which isn't a mistake, just a biased view of the author.
Now, moving on to the other points that make this book terrible and not ‘‘feminist'' at all which was mentioned in one or three blurbs...
1. The book is written competently enough, but it is repetitive and over descriptive. It has no nuance, no subtlety . It is like getting hit on the face with a brick repeatedly. The world is grim, bleak and everyone in it sucks. The men more, but the women too.2.The plot itself is all over the place. Lots of strange coincidences, it feels like the plot is being forced to go one way or the other even if it doesn't make sense for the characters or the story so far. So any valid critic to the way Japan treats and views its women is lost in this overblown ridiculous plot that ends in pages upon pages of rape torture fantasy. 3. Regarding the graphic scenes: Yes, I was aware this was a crime book and yes, I read the bits about dismemberment and murder and sex, that is not the problem. The problem is 1. I don't need the same thing to be described 5 times in different and escalating disgusting forms. It is unnecessary an at that point just serves to be shocking. And it is one thing having a psycho violent rapist romanticise his acts and think he is doing something 'beautiful'. But to have his victim, who has been an independent woman who knows her own mind during the book (or any woman!), fall in love with him in the hour it takes for him to beat her face to a pulp, rape her repeatedly, stab her and attempt to choke her to death is truly astounding and vile. She wants him to live after defending herself, they are 'the same', they 'understand each other'. If anyone reading this or the book does't understand what is wrong with this picture and how it undermines anything this book was trying to accomplish, then I don't know how else to convince them. One of the main characters gets tortured and raped and almost killed and falls in love with this random attacker and that's the end of the book. There is no possible justification for that, other than an author trying really hard to write an edgy, shocking ending. 4. There are plenty of other points I could make, but I don't think any of them will surpass the ending and I only wish I had never started or bought this book.
I heard that as an audiobook, or else I would not have finished it. It gets very, very silly in the end. Also the whole AFFRONT TO NATURE plot is very tired.
Also couldn't quite understand why the author thought a subplot about a boss turned boyfriend turned rapist necessary? He had sex with his girlfriend/assistant when she was too wasted to consent and was apparently rough, since there is a mention of bruises. They both seem to acknowledge that as a fact. The girlfriend/co-worker breaks up with him, but continues to work for him and later forgives him and finds him ‘sexy' again and he is pictured as an hounorable, good guy. Just no.
Also this boss character says that Helena (his girlfriend/victim) is both beautiful and smart, which is, in his opinion, a complete rarity sighs. We've never heard that gem before!
This book started out great and would have been a 5-star book for me if the focus had remained on the main character being a restaurant reviewer in space/the future. It had some truly great bits, filled with cynicism, weirdness and humour. The author is clearly a talented and imaginative writer.
However, the rest of the book became something completely different (after the boat incident). It becomes something more action oriented and full of tropes. I believe this part does go on for too long and wasn't as funny or enjoyable as the first bit, but it was still well written.
There are a few questionable rants about a man who wears dresses and the character seems not to know or care that being transgender is not the same thing as doing drag. And I still do not understand why the character makes such a big deal about man in drag in the far future where multiple universes/galaxies have been discovered...and why this is present in the book at all.
In any case, there are some excellent parts but it is ultimately weighed down by the latter half. If this was a restaurant review I would give the starter a 10 out of 10. It was truly utterly delicious, but it all goes downhill from there and I really did not enjoy the soggy, bland dessert.
From the title of the book and the mention of the danger of reading the King in Yellow book (madness, death, etc.) you would expect all the stories of the book to at least have some connection to it, but the second part of this book is completely non-weird, non-horror and frankly I don't know why they are included in this particular book. Frankly, the stories about young artists falling in love with Parisian prostitutes are incredibly boring and repetitive....
