Battle Royale (Le Livre de Poche, #30948)

by Koushun Takami and Masayuki Taguchi

[clementine]

This book is CRAZY. There's a lot more I can say about it (which I obviously will), but I think it can really be summed up with a simple "THIS IS JUST STRAIGHT UP CRAZY."

I went into this not expecting that much out of it. I knew I'd enjoy the plot, because how could I not, but I thought I'd be pretty underwhelmed by the writing style, characters, and finer details. I was actually favourably impressed in that regard. The style wasn't fantastic (though that can probably be chalked up to a questionable translation in large part), but it was better than I was expecting. What really surprised me was how well the characters were handled. There wasn't a great amount of character development, and I found some of the attempts at backstory (such as with Mitsuko) a little clumsy, but I actually was able to differentiate between many of the students, even with many of them having similar names that were a bit hard to grasp at first. Of course I couldn't tell you the first thing about some of the characters who were barely introduced before they died, or who died at the beginning, but I actually could pick out more than just Shogo, Shuya, and Noriko. Kazuo, Mitsuko, Shinji, Takaki, Kayoko, Hiroki, Yukie, Yumiko and Yukiko, Megami, etc are all fairly memorable to me.

Obviously the plot was very exciting and fast-paced. I wouldn't say it's a very complex plot, so it's not impressive in that regard, but it served the purpose of keeping me on my toes, so I'd say it was a success. I was desensitized to the deaths over the course of the book as I got used to it, though some were certainly more gruesome than others. All the deaths by shooting, while unfortunate, didn't make me feel too sick, because they were common and not that graphic, comparatively. The queasiest moment for me was when the students are shown their dead teacher, which was right at the beginning before I had time to adjust to the graphic nature of the book.

I think my biggest complaint is the ending. I was satisfied when it appeared that Shogo had killed Shuya and Noriko, because I thought that's how it should have ended. I won't say that the end was a cop-out, exactly, because Shogo still dies and Shuya and Noriko's future is certainly ambiguous, but I preferred the "first" ending more.

My other main complaint is that I wish there'd been more in the way of worldbuilding. The totalitarian republic the students are living in is very intriguing, and although I know it doesn't directly add to the plot, I would have been really interested to find out more about it. I was also intrigued by the name of the nation, the Republic of Greater East Asia, as it appeared to be an allusion to George Orwell's "Eastasia" in [b:1984|5470|1984|George Orwell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1328718447s/5470.jpg|153313].

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and got more out of it than I was expecting to. It had its issues, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.