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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Koji Suzuki

Sax

14:38 / 30.09.05

Stoatie has already mentioned him in another thread, so hopefully at least he'll reply to this.

So, anyone read any Koji Suzuki? He's the author of Ring, from which came the Japanese horror movie Ringu, closely followed by Ring the Hollywood remake. He's also got in translation in the UK Spiral, which is a direct follow-up to Ring, and Dark Water, a collection of horror/ghost stories all loosely connected with water.

I've just finished Spiral, and would be interested to know other people's thoughts. Now I thought Ring was very engaging and rattled along, but somehow didn't find myself as absorbed by Spiral. Perhaps it's the long discourses and diagrams of DNA, maybe the fact he feels the need to recap the plot like every other chapter. And the pay-off seemd a bit laboured and required a fairly hefty leap of the imagination.

Not having seen any of the Ring films, I'd also be interested in how people compare the movies and the books.

The Return Of Rothkoid

22:43 / 30.09.05

I have to say that the movies take what's good about Suzuki's books and elevate it to greatness. For my part - reading the books (well, Ring and Spiral) after having seen the flicks, I felt let down. The stories seemed to get bogged down in a lot of stuff - particularly Spiral, with which I couldn't really make much connection. I was pretty disappointed, as I loved the idea behind the stories, so to be let down by the source material was a bit of a bummer.

Worth looking at are the Dark Horse-reprinted (I think?)manga versions of the stories. They're a happy medium - truer to the original stories than the films, but also more engaging than the novels themselves.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:18 / 01.10.05

I really enjoyed Ring, especially seeing how the film-makers had managed to keep the story almost the same while having an entirely different cast of characters. Spiral was more science-fictiony than I would have liked- I mean, I love skiffy, but I was really after a horror novel.

Some of the stories in Dark Water, though, are absolutely fucking brilliant.

matthew.

14:15 / 01.10.05

stoat, wait till you read the third book! it's more sciency than you could imagine. the author presents a sort-of plausible answer for the tape, the girl, and everything in between. the history becomes much more convoluted; it's almost as if the author had watched scream 3 and obeyed its rules!

lonely as a cloud...

08:20 / 03.10.05

I really enjoyed Ring, although Spiral was pretty different to what I expected. I liked the differences between Ring the book and Ring the movie - the book is more a detective story than the movie, which plays the supernatural card a lot more.
The whole cloning thing in Spiral struck me as being just odd, and slightly jarring; having said that, I'm still looking forward to reading Loop, and Dark Water.

lonely as a cloud...

08:24 / 03.10.05

Rothkoid - Ring 2 bears practically no relation to Spiral. Koji Suzuki is given a writing credit for creating the characters, nothing more. Although, in fairness, Ring 2 is a worthy sequel - much more of a horror story than Spiral was.

The Return Of Rothkoid

01:42 / 04.10.05

Cloud: I know. There is a filmed version of Spiral though - Rasen, I think it's called. I haven't heard particularly good things about it.

lonely as a cloud...

08:32 / 04.10.05

Yeah, I noticed that on IMDB, although I don't think it ever got any sort of wide release outside of Japan. I'd be kinda slightly curious to see it...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:03 / 04.10.05

You can get it on DVD over here (the UK)- called Spiral. They've got it everywhere, but I haven't got round to grabbing a copy yet.

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