Now, Obviously, me being me, I've had an interest in the Haikasoru imprint since I first heard about it. However I've been remarkably lax in actually picking up any of the goddamn books. Before this I'd only managed to get All You Need Is Kill, which is pretty daft when you think about it as I loved the shit out of that book.
There aren't really too many similarities between the two though. They're both Japanese sci-fi stories, and I powered through each of them during particularly lax days at the office. Oh, and they're both actually really good. Shouldn't forget that.
How do describe this story? A brooding cyberpunk Dys-Utopian conspiracy detective story musing on the nature of consciousness? Sounds a bit pretentious.
The world presented is certainly interesting and fairly compelling reading. The idea of a supposedly perfect world that certain members of the population just can't relate to. Part of what makes it interesting is the pacing of the narrative. I admit that right at the beginning things don't sound so bad, and you almost wonder what it is the main characters are rebelling against as it were. But over the course of time the ubiquitous intrusiveness of this supposedly perfect society unravels before us in a frankly chilling vision of the future. What makes it scary is simply how PLAUSIBLE it all seems. Building on contemporary technology, trends and fears we see a homogenised society of facebook gone mad, where privacy is not just a thing of the past but also a dirty word.
Where do the misfits go in such an all encompassing system of enforced physical, mental and medical attention? There's a palpable social claustrophobia that, I suppose, is an expression of the social pressures that are fairly uniquely Japanese.
It's hard to really discuss this book without giving to much away, and the plot is not exactly straightforward. Where we find ourselves at the conclusion of the narrative is not exactly expected. The characters presented are not always quite sympathetic, but not totally unlikable. More there is a certain alien-ness which stems from the world in which they exist. The use of various html style code fragments and tags throughout the text adds to this feeling I think.
I suppose you could classify this as some light heavy reading. Whilst it didn't take me a huge amount of time to finish it's not exactly what you'd call lightweight or comfortable. In all probability it'll yield some new insights on a re-read. But I've got some other tasks to attend to before I get to that particular pleasure.
All in all a bloody good read. Go buy it or something.
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