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juushikaTitle: Loups-Garous
Author: Natsuhiko Kyogoku
Translator: Anne Ishii
Published: San Francisco: Kaikasoru, 2010 (2001)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 458
Total Page Count: 143,427
Text Number: 421
Read Because: reviewed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
james_nicoll, purchased used from the Book Bin
Review: In the near future, humans, even children, communicate almost exclusively through computers; real world meetings are rare and state surveillance is common. This should make murder nearly impossible, but the serial killings of Japanese youth catch the interest of a group of female students, their counselor, and a wayward policeman. This is a murder mystery with supernatural themes and an intelligently constructed futuristic setting; the intent is strong but the execution is poor. What Loups-Garous lacks is immersion, a willingness to throw the reader into the story despite the strange setting. The world is thoughtfully developed but over-explained; like Glukhovsky's Metro 2033, almost all dialog is appropriated for detailed worldbuilding, and the awkward translation makes this even more clumsy and unbelievable. The plot has a satisfying complexity, but it's padded by so much exposition that the book is frequently a slog; the climax has better pacing but a comically large scale. What Loups-Garous does well is intriguing and even haunting: its supernatural elements are largely metaphors but they're effective ones, finding the animal that lingers within mankind's hyper-industrialized, artificial world. But the book needs to trust the reader, cut out a hundred pages, and let the world—and its demons—speak for themselves. As it is, I appreciate the effort but don't recommend Loups-Garous.
Author: Natsuhiko Kyogoku
Translator: Anne Ishii
Published: San Francisco: Kaikasoru, 2010 (2001)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 458
Total Page Count: 143,427
Text Number: 421
Read Because: reviewed by
james_nicoll, purchased used from the Book BinReview: In the near future, humans, even children, communicate almost exclusively through computers; real world meetings are rare and state surveillance is common. This should make murder nearly impossible, but the serial killings of Japanese youth catch the interest of a group of female students, their counselor, and a wayward policeman. This is a murder mystery with supernatural themes and an intelligently constructed futuristic setting; the intent is strong but the execution is poor. What Loups-Garous lacks is immersion, a willingness to throw the reader into the story despite the strange setting. The world is thoughtfully developed but over-explained; like Glukhovsky's Metro 2033, almost all dialog is appropriated for detailed worldbuilding, and the awkward translation makes this even more clumsy and unbelievable. The plot has a satisfying complexity, but it's padded by so much exposition that the book is frequently a slog; the climax has better pacing but a comically large scale. What Loups-Garous does well is intriguing and even haunting: its supernatural elements are largely metaphors but they're effective ones, finding the animal that lingers within mankind's hyper-industrialized, artificial world. But the book needs to trust the reader, cut out a hundred pages, and let the world—and its demons—speak for themselves. As it is, I appreciate the effort but don't recommend Loups-Garous.
