Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #80542 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-07
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Synopsis
Stunning, cutting-edge thriller with a chilling supernatural twist from Japan's stylish new literary star. Asakawa is a hardworking journalist who has climbed his way up from local-news beat reporter to writer for his newspaper's weekly magazine. A chronic workaholic, he doesn't take much notice when his seventeen-year-old niece dies suddenly -- until a chance conversation reveals that another healthy teenager died at exactly the same time, in chillingly similar circumstances. Sensing a story, Asakawa begins to investigate, and soon discovers that this strange simultaneous sudden-death syndrome also affected another two teenagers. Exactly one week before their mysterious deaths the four teenagers all spent the night at a leisure resort in the same log cabin. When Asakawa visits the resort, the mystery only deepens. A comment made in the guest book by one of the teenagers leads him to a particular vidoetape. When he watches it, instead of a movie he finds an odd collection of disparate images with a portentous message at the end: Those who have viewed these images are fated to die at this exact hour one week from now.

Asakawa finds himself in a race against time -- he has only seven days to find the cause of the teenagers' deaths before it finds him. The hunt puts him on the trail of an apocalytpic power that will force Asakawa to choose between saving his family and saving civilization.

Customer Reviews

Riveting stuff...
Whilst investigating the sudden and suspicious death of his niece and her three teenage friends, a newspaper reporter invokes a curse that will kill him in seven days. There is a way to disarm the curse, but he does not know what it is. Doh! Enlisting the aid of an old school friend with an interest in the supernatural, they frantically travel around Japan attempting to find the solution. The clock is ticking...

The suspense levels in this book grew nicely for me, as each day passed and the lead characters seemed to be no nearer solving the riddle. Certainly an original idea, I do not think you will guess the outcome of this one (unless you have been told beforehand, or seen the film). I am now hooked onto the trilogy, and looking forwarding to re-engaging with the curse in 'Spiral'.

Interesting but lacks spark
The cover of this book states that the author is 'the Japanese Stephen King', but I disagree with that. This novel reads more like a thriller than a horror - which came as a shock, as I watched the very spooky film before reading the book.

Be warned - the book is very different to the film. On the plus side, the characters are far more interesting (but pretty horrible), the story is explained fully and the ending actually makes sense. On the negative side, I found the book severely lacking in any real tension. Its hard to tell if that is because the book is translated from the Japanese - with the greatest respect to the translator, its pretty inevitable that some of the momentum will be lost. Another problem may have been that, already knowing the basics of the story, there wasn't any of the sense of discovery that normally comes from reading a novel.

This is one of the very few occasions where I would say the film of the book is actually better than the book itself. It is worth a read, however, particularly if you were dissatisfied with the explanation given in the movie, and want to understand the story better.

A different style of thriller
This book has lots of positive things going for it. The story seems to have a Japanese legend background. The actual story is a lot better than the traditional 'poltergeist' type rubbish. Suzuki has a real gift for creating suspense.

However, the book does lose something in it's translation and is littered with Americanisms but dont let that put you off.