Amour-Fou♥Net

Tonight I’m going to mini-review a couple more of the books I read this summer, this time the ones that were both fictional and took place in Japan. Okay the category is kind of a stretch, as you’ll see when you realize how different the books I’m about to talk about are, but whatever. Here goes!

The Hell Screen: Yummy Fare for J-History Nerds

Okay, okay. As a mystery, The Hell Screen by I.J. Parker is kinda mediocre, though it does definitely improve in the second half. But as historical fiction, this had me drooling.

Maybe that won’t be the case for everyone–after all, I am an East Asian history major, and I’ve studied medieval Japan pretty extensively. But Parker has really succeeded in painting a very, very detailed picture of Heian era Japan, explaining every possible element of daily life in old Kyoto that would realistically intersect with her characters. I’m a stickler for historical accuracy, too, and though I’m obviously not an expert, I didn’t catch any anachronisms or errors whatsoever.

I know historical fiction tends to be considered kinda trashy, not to mention mysteries, but this was a really fun read and I’ll definitely be looking into other entries in the series.

Battle Royale: Delicious Pulpy Goodness

First, the bad: The translation of Battle Royale, by Koushun Takami, has way more errors than I would expect, and Bruce Springsteen is quoted way more than I would like. (Don’t ask.)

And now, the good: Battle Royale is one of the best (if not THE best) books I read this summer. I haven’t seen the movie (it’s on my to-do list!), so I didn’t really know what to expect. For those of you who don’t know, the basic premise of the book (and you find this out within the first few pages) is that a bunch of kids are trapped on an island and have to kill each other, in an alternate-history-late-20th-century totalitarian Japan. I won’t give more details, because I don’t want to ruin it.

The book is filled to the brim with more blood and guts than you could possibly imagine, and does more than a little stereotyping about some (not all!) of its characters. But there are enough twists and turns to make this an incredibly riveting page-turner, that WILL shock you (not in a gratuitous way, I promise!) more than once. I can’t recommend it highly enough. (Unless you’re like, really squeamish, in which case you should stay far far away… )

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at 7:08 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.