Reviews

S: Es by Kōji Suzuki

mrdcoolblue's review against another edition

challenging reflective medium-paced

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

2.0

The book series is nothing like the film series, but even disregarding that, this book has very strange pacing, no climax to speak of. While there are a few good tense moments, the series had left the horror genre a long time ago. I would call this sci-fi fantasy. Don’t come into this looking for a ghost story. 

seasidewitchery's review

1.0

Here’s the deal, this book is weird. It takes you on this large roundabout journey to an anti-climactic ending that left me wondering: are Akane and Takenori sort-of-but-not related? And I can’t even begin to explain why I am wondering that without spoiling the ending for you. As a standalone, I rate it low (1 out of 5, maybe?), but it may be a great book for a reader who is a huge fan of Sadako and the Ring series.

Read my entire review here:
https://thebeewitchedreader.com/2018/02/26/february-nrb-s-es-by-koji-suzuki/

madskbae's review against another edition

2.0

This is less of a review than it is a warning.

The narrative in the first two thirds of the book is extremely compelling, well-written, and thrilling.

Then it seems like the author suddenly gives up, and the final part of the book is composed of his notes for what would have been the continuation of the series. Just an endless info-dump of plotless exposition, rambling through plainly stated facts about something that REALLY feels like it would be enough material for another 2-3 novels. (Bad novels, mind - the plots sound awful.)

I've read Suzuki before and am aware he struggles with endings, but this is something else. It feels unfinished, and really ends everything on an extremely sour note.

zimb0's review

5.0

Might be my favorite sequel to “Ring.”


Still don’t understand why Ry was a rapist or maybe not? In the first book.

blueschala's review

3.0

The Ring books are like junk food for my brain. I know they're not that good, but they're just so delightfully weird, I can't resist them. This book is pretty much a direct sequel to Spiral, so I recommend reading at least the first two books and maybe Birthday as well before reading this one. I found the characters in S very engaging and found myself holding my breath during a few tense scenes. I wouldn't say the book is scary, but it is deeply unsettling.

Still haven't figured out why there are safe handling instructions for meat on the back cover.

zuuru's review

4.0

I'n amazed it managed to combine the lore of all the previous books, especially considering how wildly off-genre (as compared to Ring and Spiral) Loop went. The first half of course remains the best part and the author still has the issue of tl;dr massive lore dumps, but the solution to the main problem of the story actually really satisfied me.

sabrielabhorsen's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

3.0

em_harring's review

2.0

The first half or so of this had me. I was interested in what was going on and enjoyed the mystery that Suzuki was crafting and followed along well enough considering I haven't read the first four books in the series in well over 15 years.

The second half kind of went off the rails, though. It was wild and weird and took a turn I wasn't expecting and didn't love.

Spoiler

Asexual reproduction? Really? Why.

The plot was also 'wrapped up' in a weirdly placed monologue. I would have loved more action than just an explanation of what was happening.

The writing as a whole was pretty stilted and awkward at times.

Overall, a weird addition to the Ring series.

gothbog's review

5.0

I enjoyed this so much. This is the only book in the entire series that my library or the kindle app has?!? WHY OH WHY! So - this is the first book i’ve read in the series. Started at the end, but i didn’t feel lost and this certainly felt like it could be a stand alone book. I cannot wait to read all the books starting from the beginning now and learn all the lore (i’ve seen the two american movies).

I was truly terrified at times - like when the little boy was drawing at the doctors office..chills.

A lot of this was really weird so you’re just going to have to forget about biology for the time being.

emsemsems's review

3.0

‘It was hard to accept that a simple mutation of the virus—so pernicious that it could form a sarcoma in the coronary artery—rendered it completely harmless to the human body. He found it rather more reasonable to think that the virus, once transformed, had grown even more virulent.’

Not sure if reading this in the midst of a global plague makes it uncannily appropriate or madly, darkly inappropriate. Regardless, this felt oddly nostalgic to me (since I grew up watching (probably too many) horror films including the ‘Ring’ franchise). I think this would have worked better as a film than a book. The peak/climax of the story was very rushed – and too many twists. Would have preferred one or two mind-blowing twists rather than a bunch of half-arsed and could-have-been-too-confusing ones. Could it be that Suzuki was coping (not so well) with a tight deadline?

Glad to have read this but would have loved a more satisfying end as this one felt like a strange blur – somewhat cinematic but not glorious enough. Stunning cover design though, which I’ll have to admit was that that made me pick up Suzuki’s novel so quickly. I’ve not read any ‘horror’ stories in a very long time, and this was only moderately satisfying which is still alright because it makes me want to read more horror for sure. If I could describe the entire thing in on sentence it’d be: long live Sadoko Yamamura? Lol .

‘Say there were a hundred apples lined up in a wooden box. Left outside in the elements, at least one of the apples would start to spoil and become rotten. Call this first rotten apple “A.” If one got rid of A when it started going bad, the decay could be prevented from spreading, but if one did nothing, the decay would be transferred to the next apple and then the next apple, and thus the damage would spread everywhere.

Now, assuming that the good apples had the right to isolate apple A, which had gone bad, there were two conceivable ways to stop the infection from spreading. You could transfer the bad apple to another box and cut off contact forever or burn the apple and erase its existence completely.

Nevertheless, apple A hadn’t wished to become rotten. It was simply a law of nature that one apple in every hundred goes bad, and in keeping with this law, it gathered up all of the other apples’ potential to become spoiled and borne their sins all by itself. The good apples should sigh with relief that decay had come not to them but to apple A first, and they ought not demolish it out of hatred.

Could there even be a society where not one of the hundred apples would ever go bad? Trying to make it so would necessitate the use of a lot of very powerful antiseptics, and then things such as liberty, vitality, pleasure, and joy would all vanish. Making a perfect society where rotten apples never existed represented a dilemma in that all apples would be deprived of the chance to be happy.

One could either agree to a society where decay would arise according to the laws of nature, or agree to a draconian, fascist society, where the causes of decay would be suppressed and removed beforehand.

If one desired the former, then the good apples should bear no hatred toward apple A’s misfortune. Rather, they should isolate it out of a sense of sympathy, mercy, and pity. The only ones permitted to abhor apple A were the ones directly harmed by it, and it would not be right for the entire box of apples to uniformly adopt the emotions of those individuals.’

Also, the story within the story about the fucking apples was more scary/frightening to me than the novel as a whole, I think. It definitely gives more of a lingering, ‘haunting’ vibe.