Reviews with content warning for Gun violence - Cult X

Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

Cult X by Fuminori Nakamura, Kalau Almony

7 reviews

readwithev's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

⚠️ this book is very graphic and has many disturbing topics⚠️
Pros:

Multiple POVs with different genders and ages
Unreliable narrators
Unique and distinct voices
Flashbacks
A few characters have long monologues that may seem confusing but ultimately convey alot about their psyche, religious beliefs, etc.

Cons:

⚠️graphic and triggering
Due to the abusive behavior some of the male characters, women are occasionally described in derogatory and belittling ways
Lots of characters, sometimes difficult to remember all of them.

In order to truly appreciate and understand this book, I recommend Googling Japan’s work culture, their suicide rates, college entrance exam process, etc. This way you can understand why the characters in this book are experiencing alienation and frustration with their society.

Personally, I really liked this book. It is definitely not going to be for everyone. It has a lot of scenes with physical, sexual, and emotional abuse against women and children. Typical of cult leaders, terrorists and religious extremism, Sawatari (the leader of Cult X) lacks real empathy and compassion; instead, he enjoys manipulating others to feel powerful and only serves himself. He preys on weak, hopeless people to brainwash them and disposes of them without remorse. I was happy to see Narazaki grow a backbone by the end of the book. He slowly overcame his weakness for manipulation and uncontrollable lust for women. Tachibana learns to live without Takahara and takes responsibility for her role in Cult X. Even Meneno starts realizing her obsession and jealousy is childish and confesses to Tachibana.

It’s definitely a dense book and the long monologues about religion, metaphysics, and neuroscience are daunting but I liked them. It helped me understand what all theses characters are looking for - they’re searching for meaning in a world so overcome by war, technology, starvation, apathy, etc. i mean who isn’t?

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poisoned_icecream's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I don't believe this book deserves all the 1 and 2 star ratings. It's not perfect though so 3.5 is a more suitable rating in my opinion. Despite the horrendous things many of the characters say and do, there are still some positive messages in this book, such as how all human life is valuable. I'm not sure I recommend this though because it's 500 pages and there's a lot of names to remember.

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machen27's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

It's curious to me that this is described in it's "blurb" as a magnum opus, a book about cults and those who fall into them. Perhaps I'm missing cultural context or I didn't read it thoroughly enough, yet I can't shake the feeling that if this is the pinnacle of Nakamura's work, I am not interested in reading his other works. It very much is a story that happens to the protagonists, filled with disjointed flashbacks and dumps of pseudoscientific philosophical nonsense, I found it hard to care about the characters or what happens to them. I think that this is somewhat intentional on Nakamura's part, the plot of the story reflecting the experience of falling into a cult, and I credit the author that. I also struggled with the choice to include gratuitous amounts of sexual content, of which there is much, both consensual and non-consensual. It felt unnecessarily and frankly unrealistic, though I'll admit I have no factual basis for that sense. As for how the book ends,

I found the escalation to an international crisis including conspiracies to engineer this crisis juxtaposed with the idea of it all being done for no reason completely unearned, especially with the protagonist having a seemingly peaceful ending

. Ultimately I think the book failed to grab me because I have no interest in the main subjects of cults, and found that there was little real mystery here, just confusion.

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sspaghettiboness's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

It took me about 70 pages to get in, but once I was immersed, what a phenomenal book. At times difficult to follow, but overall a fantastic read that touches on so many persistent societal problems.

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m4rtt4's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

cult x, more like cult sex. textbook case of #menwritingwomen, also the absence of consent made me very uncomfortable at times.

i loved the metaphysical lectures, wish the book had stayed that way to the very end. after them the book took an even stranger turn... did i understand anything? no. do i care? also no. am i disturbed? absolutely.

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snuggleslut's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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saltydough's review

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challenging dark sad tense slow-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

To be frank, this book was not for me. I started it because I wanted to try something new, but it quickly became a slog. The biggest problem was that I hated all of the characters. I thought they were all terrible people with no redeeming qualities, which made it hard to root for any one of them in particular. Though there was some action that some might find enjoyable, the story often got bogged down in extended side tangents about characters' backgrounds and psychological trauma. Much of the story was really quite repulsive, and some passages were difficult to read. The only part I enjoyed even a little bit were some of the deeper philosophical themes that were discussed, mostly drawn from Buddhism. But honestly, reading straight-up Buddhist theology would probably be more enjoyable than this story.

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