Battle Royale, Vol. 9

This was an interesting experience for me - I came to the novel after having seen the film version and having read the manga (well, chapter 1 of it, anyways), and yet, at the same time, this was the first time that I can really saw that I got something other than mindless violence from Battle Royale.

The basic premise: a futuristic, totalitarian Japanese society has set up a game where each year, one high school class is randomly chosen to participate. Participants of the ‘game' are placed on an island, each given a randomly assigned weapon, and are told that the last one left surviving will be the one allowed off of the island.

It sounds grisly and violent, and it is - there were parts where I had to put the book down for a bit lest the violence overwhelm me. However, like any truly good violent piece of art, that violence is used as a metaphor - in this case, for how society tends to pit people against each other, and how living a dog-eat-dog type of life might end up with someone on top, but it also ends up with a lot of corpses along the way.

There are a lot of characters in the book, and it's a little hard to tell them apart from each other originally (due to them all being the same age, from roughly the same background, etc), but throughout the book you get to learn more about all of the little details that make up a life. You learn about their personal history, their silly little feuds and crushes, and the dreams they had for the future, before the game got in the way. If anything, that's the most horrific part of the book - not the blood and gore, but seeing people go from these little concerns over which boy (or girl) likes who, and then being thrust into a world where their very lives are at stake.

To sume up: the basic concept is The Running Man meets Lord of the Flies, with bits of slasher movies and The Catcher In The Rye thrown in for good measure. And, if you can get past the violent elements, it's definitely worth reading.