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We at
the Hipster Book Club understand that your reading time is
valuable, so we're going to give you a shortcut for reading
The Crimson Labyrinth: This story is about a group
of nine Japanese citizens who wake up in a strange maze with
the message "The game has begun. You must survive the labyrinth
to win the prize money as promised and be returned [home]."
Now…drawing on popular knowledge of such movies as Battle
Royale or Saw, or even books such as Lord of
the Flies, can you guess how the rest of the book plays
out? Great. We saved you nearly 300 pages of reading.
Kishi
is clearly writing for movies. With three of his works already
co-opted for Asian horror flicks (which will assuredly be
remade into awful flops for American audiences any day now),
it's clear that he knows how to write in a Dan Brown-like
"include everything but stage direction" style. However, instead
of putting butts in the seats, they're trying to get bodies
into the café-centric bookstores. Of course, those
writing in such a fashion generally forgo depth and dynamics
for flash and "witty" twists.
Though
not a bad book, The Crimson Labyrinth suffers
from the problem of simply…not needing to be written. Most
people with a halfway decent grasp of the pop culture lexicon
can recall all of the horror genre's cinematic and literary
predecessors to this book and can discern fairly accurately
what will happen in this novel: Some apparently malicious
force abducts people and throws them into a competition that
is life-or-death. The reader already knows a handful of central
plot points: Whoever is at the bottom of this evildoing is
going to be a central preoccupation of the novel (and will
probably be preposterous to make the twist easier to create),
the main character is generally going to be the "winner,"
most every other character is going to be killed in possibly
over-the-top ways, and because they're stranded without food,
at least one person is going to be eaten. Perhaps these are
spoilers, but it's almost guaranteed.
Kishi
has won the Japanese Horror Association Award twice. It's
understood that people write such things in the "About the
Author" section of the book in order to sell copies, and awards
sound impressive before readers remember that they've never
heard of that award. But one assumes that if a book is conferred
anything other than the Book Most Likely to Make Us Vomit
Gouts of Blood Award, it has to embody some measure
of quality, right? Perhaps something has been lost in the
translation, then, because nothing in Kishi's writing is particularly
mind-blowing. The plot is, admittedly, fast-paced and engaging
at points, but the characters are shallow, the writing utilitarian,
and the plot devices occasionally ridiculous. Kishi rarely
seems to convey the terror that one would expect in a book
about fighting for one's life in an alien environment.
For those
whose interest was piqued by the mention of Battle Royale
and its promise of a blood-dripping slaying-each-other-for-sport
narrative, there will probably be something of worth in this
book, and The Crimson Labyrinth sits nicely on the
"guilty pleasure" bookshelf. Since the novel is written so
much like a film, the plot moves along at a quick clip, which
makes for an entertaining read, even if it is literary popcorn.
The first half of the book embodies the most creative aspect
of Kishi's writing; it is full of discoveries as readers learn
the "rules" and environment of the game along with the protagonists.
He has obviously done his research about survival tactics
and the science involved in being stranded without food, and
he brings a strong tone of realism to a novel that could easily
fail to suspend belief, saving the novel from being cartoony.
While the characters and plot may be ridiculous at points,
the physical hardships and strategies they employee in their
survival techniques seem to have been painstakingly fact-checked.
The book
proclaims to be a sensationalistic mix of The Running Man,
Lost, and Battle Royale, and it delivers just
that. Not without its faults, Labyrinth will probably
sate a reader's minor need for sadism.
(December,
2007)
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