battle royale, finally!

part 1 review
part 2 review
i am completely surprised.  i cried at the end of this book.  out of the freakin’ blue the author was strumming my emotions like a guitar.  who knew that by the end of the novel Takami had developed an arsenal of well-developed characters?  i really didn’t see that coming.  i may have been distracted by tediously long descriptions of how to make a bomb and the locations of buildings, houses, etc. on the island–to name a few.  i think i could have skipped pages at a time before the plot started rolling along again.  i wouldn’t be surprised if another reader gave up less than half-way through due to this.  but those over-achievers out there will be nicely rewarded at the end.

i thought Takami did a great job of helping me keep the characters straight.  since each chapter is from a different character’s perspective, it can get a little hairy.   even if i didn’t recognize who the character was right away, at some point Takami would reference something to spark my memory.  i wouldn’t recommend flipping back through to sort everyone out though.  when i rarely didn’t recognize someone, i just moved on, no harm done.

the killings continued to be descriptive, gory, and extremely troubling.  since Takami provides the train of thought of each character, you can’t help but sympathize with some of them.  those that come off as inherently evil at least garner some pity for circumstances beyond their control that turned them that way.  the complexity of each character was described or at least hinted at.  so everything is not always as it seems.  and that helps keep the story intriguing. and the last page: poetic.