The story was great... Very exciting. However, the translation was poor and it really took a lot away from the book. ( )

The story was great... Very exciting. However, the translation was poor and it really took a lot away from the book. ( )

Having watched the film, I was very enthusiastic to read the book, however with so many characters and such powerful acting from the former, I expected to be disappointed.
On the contrary, I was more than surprised that instead, this was a book that was very difficult to put down. Each individual character was depicted brilliantly and there was as much action to be had in the book as the film - excellently written and thoroughly compelling. I strongly recommend this. ( )

I first checked out the graphic novel version of this book, but returned it without reading when I realized that there was an actual novel. The copy I read is over 600 pages and was so engrossing that it took me just over a day to read the whole thing. Koushun Takami's book is completely brilliant. While the violence is unprecedented and quite explicit, Takami's characters are sympathetic, especially when you don't expect them to be. Battle Royale is set in a world unlike our own, where teenagers can be taken to remote places and forced to kill their own classmates to survive. All of this done in the name of keeping peace. What Takami's characters do is try to find a way to survive, to work together, and what they discover is much more interesting. I completely loved the book and was pleased with the way it ended. I will eventually watch the movie as well. Highly recommended, though not for the weak of heart. ( )

In the Republic of Greater East Asia, a frightening event called the “Program” takes place once a year in order to keep the citizens compliant and distrustful of one another. Third-year junior high classes are randomly selected throughout the nation, relocated to an isolated area, and forced to kill one another until just one survivor—the victor—remains.

This year, it’s 15-year-old Shuya Nanahara’s class that gets chosen and relocated to a small island. Shuya is forced to watch his friends die and his classmates go crazy. But what if there were some way to beat the fascist government’s supposedly infallible system?

BATTLE ROYALE is brutal, both physically and mentally. It tosses you into the middle of a corrupt world and forces you to be witness to an event that’s deadly and well established. Innocent and not-so-innocent teenagers die every few pages in unapologetic prose. No sooner do we come to know a student’s personality and past when he or she is killed, the abruptness of losing someone interesting you’ve just begun to know a definite stomach-turner, a definite shake-up.

If this kind of dystopian literature is your kind of thing, there’s plenty of it to be had. Even if you’ve got a weak stomach for violence, however, BATTLE ROYALE still gives you a lot to think about. Koushun Takami’s writing is nothing striking, and yet there’s something about the plainness of it, the bluntness of the translated version that I read, that gets inside your veins and messes up your organs. It’s the way he gives us a brief character sketch of each of the 42 students—and then takes them away from us in horrifying manners. It’s the way that this book’s world takes the existence of the “Program” as expected, unchangeable. And it’s the way that this book makes you doubt yourself and the characters, not sure whom you should trust, just as the government intends for you to react.

BATTLE ROYALE provides questions to think over, disturbing ideas and images that will keep you up late into the night. If you do not have a weak stomach and have the time to read an intense 600-page work, I suggest picking up BATTLE ROYALE in order to completely annihilate everything you’ve previously thought about the dark side of human nature and our curiosity in violence and death. ( )