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 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. ( )

This was ..... weird. And I do not mean :) weird :) .... I mean weird.....

So in my local bookstore I noticed this pretty hefty book and after reading the short description on cover decided hey, looks good lets give it a try.

And now .... I guess this is one of those books that tries to be everything. In short story is about very special sort of (active and retired) professionals that end up on a bullet train (Shinkansen, Japanese fast train). And this is where things get really weird. So all of these assassins are cold blooded killers and are extremely deadly. But number of brain cells on average is below 10 for current generation and normal count for retired hit-men. Way main assassins behave is slapstick comedy (especially Ladybird) but in a way that is .... well irritating. Main antagonist is .... true psycho and I would expect anyone involved to go on him like Mel Gibson did on Ransom. I mean kid needs to be driven by a very huge piece of machinery that will leave him broken for good.

But no everyone is so clueless it is sick to watch.

Then dialogues - if it weren't for constant attempt for comedic relief book would be 1/3 shorter and more compact and punchy. This way it is bloated and in some cases such goofy dialogue is truly disconcerting.

So in general, interesting book (last third is best part of the book), lots of twists and turns and interesting characters. Unfortunately instead of focusing to be a thriller (be it even black comedy) book loses its center and becomes ..... weird psychotic-like novel.

Recommended, but if you are not in weird, forced slapstick comedy books you might not like it. ( )

This is a much better book than Three Assassins. I love the way Isaka builds the tension from seemingly improbable ideas and for at least the first third of the book I didn't see how he could sustain it, but he does. One can quite see the cinematic potential. ( )

Orchestration by Rimsky-Korsakov. ( )

A breath of fresh air, this one! It was great! ( )