The best way to enjoy Ring by Koji Suzuki is to not watch the movie (the Japanese one or the American remake) and not know anything about it. I’m jealous of people who can come to the novel with a fresh mind like that. For the rest of us, the novel is still good, but there’s no sense of “aha!” once the plot unfolds.

The book starts off with the death of four teenagers, seemingly unrelated other than having died at exactly the same time and from the exact same thing: sudden heart failure. From that starting point, Suzuki writes an evenly paced mystery that’s part detective novel and part supernatural fiction.

Unlike the movies, the novel Ring is more mystery than jump-out-of-your-seat horror. But that doesn’t make it any less scary. I made the mistake of reading this before bed several nights and while I wasn’t that scared whlie reading it, more than once I woke up in the middle of the night and felt fear. One night, I woke up, looked at the BF sleeping next to me and for some reason I thought he was dead.

In addition to the mystery, there’s a lot of Japanese culture and traditions in the book. The translator balances having the book feel Japanese without making it feel too foreign to non-Japanese readers. In other words, it reads like something that happened in Japan but could also happen in any other country.

The book explains a few things that the movies gloss over and while the main plot is the same, there are small differences and even a few surprises. It may not be for someone who wants to read a written version of the movie, but I enjoyed it for the background it gave as well as for more insight into the detective character and other character motives. ( )

Loved the plot, but the writing was flat. Considering Suzuki's reputation, I'm assuming this was the fault of the translators (Robert B. Rohmer, Glynne Walley). ( )

I rank this as better than the movie(s), perhaps specifically because it's also more absurd than them? ( )

Ring was my first dip into Koji Suzuki's books, and I'll probably be reading more. This is one of those books that's hard for me to review, because I have a few things I'd love to say about it, but can't without spoiling the ending. Suffice it to say I loved the basic concept, with the extension from the biological realm to the psychical. The sparse writing drove the story forward much like a similar approach in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Things lag a bit in the middle, but I think that's done on purpose - again, without spoiling things, I can't say much here - just keep going and you'll be rewarded. ( )

I’m a big fan of horror literature, but oddly enough not at all of horror films; I simply can’t sit through one. I am, however, often curious about the plots of certain films, which is why I’m happy whenever an intriguing movie is based on a book. I can read the source material and not fell I’m missing out by not sitting though the movie.

So I embarked on Suzuki’s Ring after having read the movie reviews and spoilers (I’m one of the few people I know who don’t mind spoilers; I’m more interested in how an author gets from A to Z than in what Z actually is) and being thus made aware of the differences between the print and film versions. I found both versions of the story equally intriguing, and looked forward to the novel.

I can’t say I was completely disappointed, and yet... There was something that kept me from being sucked into the story, and I couldn’t really put my finger on it until I had finished it. Then I realized that I’d been forcing myself to follow along with the protagonist, even though I found many of his decisions implausible for much of the book. Everything just seemed to well connected, and the conclusions Asakawa reached early on too “easy.” He seemed to jump from question to answer too nimbly considering what he was facing, and this was only made worse by the appearance of his friend Ryuji. Fortunately, though, the action eventually took over and I was soon rushing to finish the story and meet the deadline looming over the characters.

But as I said, things improved in the second half, and made for an interesting story. I'll have to check out the other books in this series. ( )