Bullet Train

This book focuses on multiple sets of characters, all of whom are traveling on the same bullet train. There's Kimura, a recovering alcoholic whose young son is comatose in the hospital. Kimura is planning to kill Satoshi, the Prince, the angelic-looking but sociopathic teenager who hurt Kimura's son. There's Nanao, the self-proclaimed "unluckiest assassin in the world," who's been sent to steal a suitcase - a seemingly easy job, but Nanao knows that nothing is ever easy when he's involved. And then there's Tangerine and Lemon, two assassins who've been tasked with retrieving their boss's kidnapped son and a suitcase, the very same suitcase that Nanao has been sent to steal. Their job seems easy too, and just about done...until the show more boss's son suddenly winds up dead.

This is set in the same world as Isaka's Three Assassins and takes place sometime after it (a few years, I think?). Although this can be read as a standalone, there are a few references to characters and events here and there that will make more sense if you've read Three Assassins first.

As in Three Assassins, there was a lot going on in this, and a lot of moving pieces involved. To help readers try to keep track, the author even included a diagram of the bullet train at the start of each chapter, and marked which cars that characters from that chapter were in.

I read this before watching the movie. The movie follows the tone and events of the book better than I expected...up until the end, at which point it added explosions that didn't exist in the book in an effort to make everything bigger and flashier. The movie also ruined what I thought was one of the book's best reveals. If you have to choose one or the other, I definitely recommend the book over the movie.

Anyway, this was a fun, weird, and slick read. Although this was technically filled with killers, the only character I truly disliked, for the most part, was the Prince. I very much wanted to see that little monster finally suffer some consequences for his horrible actions. Meanwhile, it was easy to forget that Tangerine and Lemon were supposed to be dangerous, considering they spent so much on-page time bickering and talking about Thomas and Friends. And Nanao honestly seemed like a fairly decent guy, despite his profession.

I liked the way that having most of the characters and action trapped on the bullet train concentrated the various storylines. Even though the connections between everything weren't always immediately apparent, having everything happen on the bullet train made it easy to see that everyone would be forced to cross paths sooner or later.

I just learned that there's a third book available in English after this one (and a fourth book, soon to be released!). I definitely plan on reading it.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

I enjoyed ‘Bullet Train’ at first. It was odd but funny. Tangerine and Lemon amused me. They’re like characters from a Quentin Tarantino movie – hard to believe in but fun to watch – bizarre but in a way that feels witty rather than strange. I liked Nanao too – the man for whom things always go spectacularly wrong, even when his assignment is: get on train – take briefcase – get off at next stop. I enjoyed the escalating madness of it – like watching a Roadrunner cartoon.

Tangerine, Lemon and Nanao are not really people, they’re thought experiments – archetypes with pronounced characteristics that make their behaviour predictable enough to be fun and weird enough to be amusing. Then they’re dropped into situations show more that stress-test them and make them bounce off each other in carefully orchestrated chaos.

Two things led me to me abandoning the book after making it through the first 240 pages: I strongly disliked two of the characters and I got bored.

I enjoyed the passages with Lemon and Tangerine and Nanao but I couldn’t settle to the storyline with Kimura and the schoolboy Satoshi - The Prince. It wasn’t just that neither character had any redeeming attributes, the other characters are professional assassins after all – it was that their part of the story felt ponderous and laboured to me. I can see that The Prince is meant to be monstrous and he is in a way but it’s a very pedestrian way. The Prince isn’t from a Looney Tunes cartoon, he’s the product of those 1960s American psychology experiments on obedience by people like Milgram. And these sixty-year-old concepts are presented as if they were new and startling. Every time we returned to these two characters, I groaned and had to make myself continue reading.

Then, after a hundred and fifty pages or so (about a third of the way through the book), I started to get bored. The plot felt like it was moving in slow motion and I couldn’t imagine how it could possibly take 451 pages to play out.

I set with it, past the halfway mark, hoping for a change in pace. When that didn’t happen I decided I was done. I’d like to know what happens but I’d rather Iive with the movie version than wade through the second half of the book. show less

This was an exciting thriller. I was immediately attracted by the premise: a group of assassins and criminals all on the same bullet train to Morioka, trying to achieve conflicting goals. There’s a nice variety of characters and POVs, and the story switches among them at a good pace.

I liked how each chapter began with the name of the person it was following and showed a little bullet train with shading to indicate which car the character was in (and if the character was not on the train, there was no shading). Lemon was my favourite character because of his obsession with Thomas the Tank Engine—it seemed appropriate for the setting and I was tickled at the juxtaposition between his profession and his obsession.

I was genuinely show more surprised in places and found this a fun, easy ride. That said, I’m probably not going to watch the movie, because I don’t buy the idea of Brad Pitt playing any of these characters (unless maybe he played Lemon like his character in Burn After Reading, which is my favourite role of his). show less

Bullet Train was such a complete departure from what I expected. Instead of the gritty complicated thriller of fast-paced action that is typically demanded of lock room (train) full assassins' story, what we got is a darkly humorous even a satirical take on the genre. This, however, is no farce, there is still plenty of action, and killing, and all the fun of a thriller to be had here. This is satire at its best sprinkled in the story with a wink and a nod, respecting the source and elevating it rather than trying to tear it down. All done through an eclectic cast of underworld characters. From the unluckiest assassin in the world and his sarcastic go-between, the wonderfully odd couple paired assassins that debate the merits of show more literature vs the moral values of a children's TV show, a drunk seeking revenge, a psychopath teen mast mind (reading a lot of these, these days), a mysterious man that is unevenly easy to talk to, and a sadistic and compliment killer. You know for sure that not everyone comes out of this encounter alive. The plot is pretty standard, a train of bad guys that kill and steal from one another because they all do the same kind of work and run in the same circles must sort out the cluster this all creates before the train reaches its final destination. How it all plays out and the interplay between characters is where this story really shines. Some are played to be serious hard nose tasks, others are full of humorous banter that tonally swifts this story from gritty realism to something a bit more jokey in a way feels more authentic. They may be killers, but for most this is their 9 to 5. They are incredibly efficient at dispatching their targets and in the latter stages of this thriller there is plenty of action. Even manages to end on a lighthearted note in its own macabre kind of way. show less

This train doesn't stop! The plotting is devious and intricate and the characters are different shades of bad, each with a dirty job that will probably intersect with another character's path, no matter how hard they try to stay out of, or get into, each other's way. Some of the dialog may suffer from translation from the original Japanese but the quirkiness fits right in. Fast-paced, funny, violent, and a little bit insane but also hopeful and philosophical in a twisted way.

'Steal someone's suitcase and get off the train. That's it.'

All aboard the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Morioka! Two hired goons have rescued a gangster's son from his kidnappers and are returning with the boy and the ransom money. Another killer has been hired to steal the suitcase with the money in it. And, just by coincidence, yet another killer has boarded the train looking for a psychopathic 14-year old boy who pushed his son off a roof, leaving him in a coma in hospital. So, steal the suitcase and get off the train. What could possibly go wrong....?

Well, pretty much everything, as Nanao (the self-proclaimed unluckiest killer in the world) is soon to find out. The two men with the money are known as Tangerine and Lemon, the vengeful show more father is Kimura, the schoolboy is known as the Prince, and as the train speeds through the Japanese countryside all manner of hell breaks loose both on the train and in the world of Japanese gangsters. As the book progresses, you start to doubt everyone who is on board: the mild-mannered schoolteacher, the conductor, the woman with the drinks trolley.... Are they genuine, or killers? And, as the body count rises, the mayhem gets ever more complicated as yet more hired killers and gangsters gather at every station on the line.

Other reviewers have compared this to Tarantino. For me, it's more like the (independent cinema) style of Hal Hartley: deadpan humour, almost slapstick violence and an oddball set of characters prone to meander into philosophical discussions on any number of subjects. What this means is that, for all the pace of the plot and the train itself, the book will take flight into these digressions, and then jump into a flashback, which results in the book actually being less frantic than you might expect. For me, that is the genius of the book: it's written in the present tense, which adds to the sense of immediacy and pace, but it is also a fully-fledged 'novel' rather than just a thriller. Each of the main characters will grab your attention with their idiosyncrasies, and it's pretty much up to each individual reader as to which one you side with. Interestingly, the original Japanese title can be translated as 'ladybug', which forms part of the written form of one of the main character's name, which suggests that we are being led in one particular direction. The ending, when we finally reach the end of the line, is suitably chaotic and open-ended, which might frustrate some but actually forms the perfect way to wrap things up.

I absolutely 100% loved this! Possibly the most fun I have had with a book for years - it's bonkers, funny, violent and had me hooked from start to finish. The perfect book just to escape into and enjoy the ride. If I could give 6 stars I would!

(I'm not even going to dwell on the dreaded phrase 'soon to be a Hollywood film'. Looking at the cast list, I genuinely shiver with dread at what they will do with it. Please, please - read the book, and don't bother with the film!). show less

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Five assassins on a fast-moving bullet train find out their missions have something in common in this witty and electrifying thriller

Satoshi—The Prince—looks like an innocent schoolboy but is really a stylish and devious assassin. Risk fuels him as does a good philosophical debate, such as . . . is killing really wrong? Kimura’s young son is in a coma thanks to The Prince, and Kimura has tracked him onto the bullet train heading from Tokyo to Morioka to exact his revenge. But Kimura soon discovers that they are not the only dangerous passengers onboard.

Nanao, nicknamed Ladybug, the self-proclaimed “unluckiest assassin in the world,” is put on the train by his boss, a mysterious young show more woman called Maria Beetle, to steal a suitcase full of money and get off at the first stop. And the lethal duo of Tangerine and Lemon are also traveling to Morioka. The suitcase leads others to show their hands. Why are they all on the same train, and who will make it off alive?

A bestseller in Japan, and soon to be a major film from Sony starring Brad Pitt and Joey King, Bullet Train is an original and propulsive thriller which fizzes with an incredible energy as its complex net of double-crosses and twists unwinds to the last station.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Not the movie. The movie is fast and loud, American and violent. The book is slower, more nuanced, and very Japanese. It also has a universal message for its readers: Nothing, but nothing!, can be allowed to get in the way of Revenge. Call it Retribution: It is the eternal weighing of deeds for the pinpoint-accurate design of their equal and opposite results.

Revenge alone is sacred.

If you haven't read Three Assassins, a lot of the why of this story is not going to make a blind bit of sense. I strongly recommend getting into the universe of the assassins before embarking on this exciting outing into their world. Don't spend a lot of time asking "why" of this book only to get the unsatisfying answer a) because, 2) read Three Assassins, that's why.

A must for initiates, though. The increased famailiarity the book assumes you have is license for it to really ramp up the use of multiple, intersecting though definitely not parallel, PoV chapters...and that narrative technique requires practice to get used to when decoding tangentially connected story lines. This weird story of five assassins doing similar but not causally related things on one speeding train that's going nowhere special or significant to no unusual purpose. It's just moving at speed, and it's not going to stop for a predetermined period of time; perfect for a murder or two. The assassins, like in the first book, are very highly skilled at very weird specialties of killing. They operate at a superhuman level of concentration. They are, in short, very fictional. Since this is unabashedly fiction, that's okay by me. Big fun, nothing deep; the original story had more of the Message, this one merely plays the videogame for you.

Now, about that film: Like 3 Body Problem, it shifts things to a safely western, US-white-male footing so as not to run afoul of the clucking hens of the right wing who glare with their beady little eyes and three functioning neurons at any and all things queer (let alone Queer!) because...well, here I sit with my teeth in my mouth, unable to come up with any reason for their hostility except "they's stupid." Anyway, whatever the source of their rage, the entertainment studios won't take risks that will unquestionably, positively not pay off as increased profits in short, medium, or long runs, so here we are with a pallid, denatured action flick of what was a more subtle, subversive idea once in its life. show less