Bullet Train

Rating: 3.5 ⭐️

I have mixed feelings about this book. I had high expectations, but I feel somehow disappointed. The plot is entertaining for sure. You don't have good guys in the story, all of them are bad and even evil. The initial problem grows bigger and bigger. The situations are ridiculous to an extent that become incredible, but the characters keep it going.

If it were just that, I'd give this book 5 stars. However, one thing that drove me crazy was the dumbness of some characters. They make some serious stupid decisions that made the reading experience exhausting and frustrating. Even though I know this probably was to add more humor to the story, to me it was unnecessary and annoying.

This book is soon to become a movie, and I have no idea how the adaptation will be. The plot is obviously not for everyone, so I'm quite skeptical about how this can be mainstream. But I really hope they change some of the characters' personalities, because I think that's the main flaw of this book.

I won this book through Goodreads and I thank to publishers for providing me this copy. My review isn't influenced by this fact.

I'm not sure if there is such a thing as reading a book pre-emptively, but that's what I did with this, when I heard that there is a big budget film adaption coming in August (starring Brad Pitt and Sandra Bullock, amongst others).

It's probably not the kind of book I usually read, but it turned out to be absolutely glorious, violent fun. In reviews, I've often seen comparisons to Pulp Fiction, and it's easy to see why - a Shinkansen full of a collection of professional hit men of various levels of competence, and other assorted criminals and psychopaths with conflicting aims, all having random discussions covering a whole range of bizarre random philosophical questions and - more than anything else - Thomas the Tank Engine, while attempting to kill each other, or at least avoid being killed.

It's full of clever twists and turns, and towards the end there is one final particular twist that is so unbelievably delicious, if I told you I would have to kill you. But it's not really a spoiler to note that by the time the Shinkansen reaches its final destination, the number of dead bodies on the train vastly outnumbers those still alive.

If you have knowledge of Japanese culture and literature, this is probably an enjoyable book. Unfortunately, I am not all too familiar with these things and found myself lost throughout most of the story.

The plot itself is fairly simple — five assassins on a train and a briefcase. I really couldn't tell you much more than that. The characters all blended together for me and I could never remember who was who (and I wasn't invested enough to put a great effort into doing so).

I got more of a heist vibe from this story than a thriller. I think I would have enjoyed the book a lot more if I was better acquainted with Japanese literature. It felt slow yet hectic which was an odd combination, and the names were confusing to me as well. Definitely a situation where the problem is my personal preference rather than the book itself (although I have nothing to compare it to in this genre). If not for this being a book club read, I wouldn't have bothered to finish it. 

I greatly enjoyed Bullet Train, a thriller that takes place almost entirely aboard the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Morioka. It was certainly violent in parts, but I also found myself laughing out loud, which I was not anticipating at the start of the book. There's a great cast of characters, none particularly lovable (they are killers after all), but some much more likable than others. The top review on Goodreads likens it to a Tarantino movie, but the comparison I kept coming back to was the Coen brothers. The characters are all pretty quirky, and the duo of Lemon and Tangerine especially would have fit right in in Fargo. There are lots of interweaving plots, but they were easy to keep track of and there are several details included in the first part of the novel that come back towards the climax and contribute to its fantastic conclusion.

I'm glad it comes out in August, because I think it will be the perfect beach read!

This was overall a fun book, but I think this is one of those rare cases where the movie is actually better than the book. For some reason, all of the various events felt even more ridiculous on paper than on screen. There's definitely better thrillers out there, but I don't regret the read. Probably not going to seek out anything further from the author.

It's a high-speed bullet train running from Tokyo to Morioka. Former underworld heavy, Kimura has boarded the Shinkansen to mete out revenge after his son was pushed off a roof by the sociopathic 14 year old known as The Prince. Meanwhile Thomas the Tank Engine loving Lemon and his partner, the more erudite Tangerine, have left a bloody trail after rescuing the top crime boss, Mr. Minegishi's, son along with the ransom money in a marked suitcase. And Nanao, the self-dubbed “unluckiest assassin in the world” is there to steal that suitcase. And that's just the set-up. Things get truly wild from there.

It's the world of John Wick: Japanese transit edition. This is the bit of thriller escapism I've been looking for and The Prince - though royally annoying, and one of those literary characters you wish you could just smack across the head with the book as you're reading it - offers up some timely observations around groupthink, persuasion and people's inability to see the bars of their own cage. Punk kid still deserves a swift kick though.

As the bodies start piling up it does begin to teeter towards ridiculousness, but the confined space with multiple players intersecting over the course of the story delivers constant momentum. I suspect this could very well be a case where the movie will be better than the book.

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