I was looking forward to this novel, but I felt like the plot was too convoluted. I could see myself enjoying this more as a movie than a book.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CSIacRBlTvg/

"Bullet Train", by Kotaro Isaka, translated into English by Sam Malissa, and published at @abramsbooks was one of my most anticipated releases of 2021. Japanese thrillers are my favorite sub-genre of thrillers, so I was very excited to discover that a new voice that is a best-selling author in Japan was coming to the English-speaking world. To top it all off, it was actually available in the "Read Now" section on @netgalley . Quite lucky of me, I would say...very much unlike the main protagonist of this story, Nanao.

I really don't want to give too much away in terms of plot, as thrillers are best left to be discovered as one reads them. I will say though, that this book is ridiculous, in a good way. It's crazy and quite unbelievable, and that's exactly what makes it fun. The setting, as suggested by the title, is a bullet train, the famous Japanese Shinkansen. Aboard the train, there are several assassins, all with fairly simple tasks. But when the tasks start getting them in each other's ways, chaos ensues. Add a fourteen year old psychopath who philosophies about genocide and toys with everyone for the fun of it, and you get one of the wildest rides I've been on in a while.

I found the writing to be very cinematic, so I was very happy to see this will be made into a movie soon. I'm sure it will translate very well on screen. I did feel like the book was a bit on the long side, with the pace slowing down some in the middle, but overall I enjoyed it a lot and felt it all came together nicely. The sections about "The Prince" were a bit hard to read at times. I doubt I'm the only person feeling so, but ever since becoming a mother, I have a harder time reading about psychopathic/ killer children.

All in all, this was a fun thriller. It's quite unlike others I've read before, more on the satirical side. I am curious now about Kotaro Isaka's other works ( "Remote Control" seems to be available in English), and will definitely check them out. In the meantime, I recommend checking "Bullet Train" out. Suspend belief, and enjoy the ride. Thank you to NetGalley and AbramsBooks / The Overlook Press for the e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

To be entirely honest, I could not quite finish this novel. I think it just isn't for me and unsuited to my tastes so I won't be writing a formal review. This book would be perfect for a person who is both a fan of the distinctive style of reflective prose that is unique to Japan and also enjoys an over the top almost slap stick kind of action thriller. The combination just wasn't for me.

I think this book suffered from a bit of a translation issue. There were attempts at comedy that fell flat and the action and suspense did not hit the mark for me. I've been on bullet trains and was really looking forward to this one but alas, the book's pacing did not even come close to the vehicle it took place on.

I wasn't sure about this at first, but it gets better and more fun as you go along for the ride. A great mix of intrigue and humor that should make a killer film next year.

Can humor transcend language? Will Americans understand Bullet Train’s off-the-chain Japanese dark satirical humor? The answer for me, at least, is not really.

“Steal someone’s suitcase and get off the train. That’s it.“

Five assassins are speeding across Japan in a train. Most are looking for a suitcase full of cash though one is only looking for revenge. A kidnap victim is murdered. It’s a small world in Japan’s underworld as everyone has a history with each other. Twists, turns and double crosses ensue.

The plot of Bullet Train seems so familiar, though I was unable to remember where I have seen it before. My main issue with the book was how long it was. Plus, many scenes are repeated from multiple points of view. It wasn’t until the ending that the pacing picked up to a thriller’s pace.

I love the idea of this book more than the book itself. This book is scheduled to be a blockbuster US movie releasing in April 2022 with Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock and Lady Gaga. I think it is best to wait for that. 3 stars.

Thanks to The Overlook Press, Abrams Books and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

The Shinkansen is Japan’s well-known Bullet Train, known for its’ speed, but Kotaro Isaka brings a new meaning to Bullet Train. Assassins Lemon and Tangerine have rescued the kidnapped son of a gangster and are traveling with the boy and a suitcase full of money.. their instructions were to rescue him, take care of the kidnappers and bring back the money. Nanao is tasked with stealing the suitcase and getting off the train at the first stop. It is a simple assignment, but when you are the unluckiest assassin in Japan nothing will go right. Kimura’s son Wataru was pushed from the roof of a building and now lies in the hospital in a coma. He follows Satoshi, the teenager who pushed Wataru, onto the train to assassinate him. Absolutely nothing goes as planned for anyone and what ensues is a voyage where situations change at the blink of an eye and tracking the suitcase is like following the ball in a shell game.

While each of the characters is capable of violence, it is Satoshi who is the worst of the bunch. He uses his youth to appear as an innocent schoolboy, but he is manipulative and uses the people around him to carry out his schemes. Lemon and Tangerine have worked together for a while. Tangerine is well-read and tries to get Lemon to educate himself, but Lemon limits his reading and viewing to tales of Thomas and Friends. He relates each situation and the people he encounters to the various locomotives in Thomas’ stories. As their Shinkansen speeds from Tokyo to Morioka not only do everyone’s paths cross but there are also other assassins who find their way onto the train during the journey. Kotaro Isaka’s story contains humor and enough twists to keep you guessing to the very end. Once you begin reading Bullet Train you will not be able to put it down until you see who makes it off the train at the final station. It is a truly entertaining story. I would like to thank NetGalley and Abrams/the Overlook Press for providing this book for my review.

Unfortunately, I found this a very tedious, boring and almost embarrassing read. Some have suggested that this is satire, but I found it a chore to complete.

Thank you to NetGalley and The Overlook Press for the chance to read an early copy of this book!

This book is kind of wacky and full of antiheroes. I can definitely see how it will make for a fun movie, with the constantly shifting points of view, and the charisma that actors could bring to the role. As a book with no one you want to root for, it feels kind of empty. But it certainly takes you on a fast-paced ride, even if it feels like a ride to nowhere.

A strange book. While the plot is fast-paced and the story is intriguing, it doesn’t feel like a book at all. I feel it would do better as a manga or a movie? The irony of the story was humorous and the characters were unique, but something about Bullet Train felt off.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC of Bullet Train. I was drawn to this book after learning that it would become a major motion picture and was considered a thriller. The novel is one of the most unique concepts in a thriller that I've ever read - it's full of satire commentary, murder, and a whole lot of evil characters. That being said, I found this book difficult to want to finish. I kept getting bored, the dialogue was very weird at times, I despised most of the characters and the book kept losing my interest. I think this will be a very entertaining movie but I really didn't enjoy the novel.

This dark, witty tale of five assassins on the same bullet train has already been turned into a forthcoming film, with Brad Pitt leading a stellar cast. It’s easy to see why! Translated from the Japanese by Sam Malissa, this novel’s frenetic energy brings to mind the best of modern crime cinema, with multiple points of view going back and forth in time to bring us a solidly entertaining, astonishingly clever tale.

We open on our first assassin, Kimura, who’s come aboard the bullet train headed from Tokyo to its final destination in Morioka, over three hours away. He’s intent on finding and punishing the teenager who had his son Wataru pushed from the roof of a department store. This teenager, known throughout the narrative as The Prince, is a sociopathic chaos agent. Only fourteen years old, his understanding of human nature is far greater than his age would belie, as evidenced by the thoughts displayed in his school book report on the Rwandan genocide:

QUOTE
The Prince understood it like this: when people have a difficult decision to make, one that may go against their code of ethics, they conform to the group, and even come to believe that the answer is correct.

When he thought about it in those terms, it became easy to see the mechanism by which the genocide not only was difficult to stop but by which it fuelled itself. The people doing the killing didn’t trust their own judgement, but rather went along with the group, believing that was right.
END QUOTE

Profound stuff, especially in the age of conspiracy theories and vaccine deniers. Our other assassins aren’t quite as deep or devious, though literature-loving Tangerine could give The Prince a run for his money. Tangerine, however, is too often preoccupied with handling his flaky partner Lemon, whose gift for violence is almost as strong as his obsession with Thomas the Tank Engine. While their attempts at serious conversation can be frustrating for them both, they work well together most of the time, and are looking forward to the relatively easy task of escorting a gang boss’ son home after rescuing the kid from a kidnapping.

The fifth assassin is Nanao a.k.a. Ladybug, whose bad luck is legendary in criminal circles. His handler, Maria, has actually contracted him to do what ought to be the simplest and least violent of all the jobs on the train: pick up a suitcase after boarding in Tokyo, then disembark with it at the very next stop. But misfortune keeps him from leaving the train, stop after stop, as he and the other assassins slowly learn that their missions are all somehow intertwined.

The many twisty layers of mystery and violence are a total thrill ride as the five assassins attempt to outwit, manipulate and escape one another, all while frantically trying to communicate -- or sometimes avoid communicating -- with friends and foes outside the train. The dialog is snappy and the characters each well-defined, with very different perspectives and ideas, as here where Maria is trying to help Nanao figure out over the phone what to do with an unexpected corpse:

QUOTE
‘Don’t speak ill of the dead,’ she says earnestly. ‘You didn’t need to kill him, you know.’

‘I didn’t mean to kill him! He slipped, we fell, his neck broke. It wasn’t a mistake, it was an act of God.’

‘I don’t like men who make excuses.’

‘Don’t speak ill of the living,’ he jokes, but she clearly isn’t in the mood. ‘Anyway, I’m holding [him up] now, and I’m at a complete loss. You know, as to what to do with his body.’

‘If you’ve got your arms around him you might as well just stay there in the gangway and make it look like you’re kissing.’ She sounds a bit desperate.
END QUOTE

Desperate times call for desperate measures, as our motley crew will discover in the course of this novel’s events. By turns vicious, philosophical and wickedly funny, this whip smart thriller made me chortle and gasp and, at one point, cheer out loud. I’m genuinely excited to see how they’ll adapt this already cinematic narrative into a movie, and am quietly confident they’ll make a success of it. Hard not to, with a basis as solid and riveting as this!

This was an intriguing setting for a mystery, but I could not enjoy it at this time. Perhaps I will try it again in the future.

I usually love Japanese fiction, but this was a miss.
I did like the concept of the book, but disliked the dialogue and writing style. What I also found strange was that there wasn't that much interaction or focus on any of the other passengers. You can't tell me that nobody else would notice that something weird is going on?! Not believable at all.
I agree with the other reviewers that this would be better as a 90 minute movie. Unfortunately this didn't meet my expectations.

Thanks netgalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I plowed through it, but it was challenging.
Too many characters to keep up with. None of them were well developed which led me to be disengaged.
Great idea for a book - could see it becoming a movie - just didn't do it for me.

This is a thriller following 8 assassins who infiltrate a train - the entire book takes place over a few hour train ride. I really like the concept and I feel like it will make a great movie adaptation - however for me this book was wayyy too long and the huge cast of characters was really difficult to keep up with and remember who was who.

This is a new translation of Bullet Train, which was originally released in Japan in 2010. This release also comes with the news that a movie adaptation is in the works in the US.

The strength of this novel is the overall premise- five assassins get on a train and chaos ensues. Unknown to the assassins, their goals are entangled in a very knotty mess, which leads to many misunderstandings, complications, and more than one death.

The assassins are introduced very quickly (in the first 8% or so of the book), so initially I struggled to separate the characters. As the story progressed, however, the characters continued to develop and clarify, becoming fully distinct individuals by the end of the novel.

I did struggle with one aspect of the premise of this novel. The entire story takes place over two and a half hours on a train, with passengers other than the assassins present. In many parts of the story, it was difficult (impossible, really) for me to believe that the other passengers would not notice what was happening around them. The only time other passengers are really addressed in the novel is when one of the assassins pulls them in briefly to accomplish some objective. For me, this overlooking by the other passengers was just not believable.

Overall, Bullet Train was a fun read, if a bit strained in terms of believability. I do think this story has the potential to be a very good movie, especially if they can clarify how exactly other passengers missed assassins, dead bodies, and guns, oh my!

Interesting read. I don't know that there is a similar book out there. The characters, although all morally dubious, are well fleshed out. I got shades of the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith but I think that's just the assassins thing.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Abrams Books for an advanced copy of this new thriller.

After the movie Pulp Fiction was released , multi-character stories of funny named assassins doing sorta-funny things while killing lots of people became the rage as imitation is not only flattery but can make lots of money too. Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka is one of those movies only in book form.

Assassins gather on a train, assigned various tasks from bodyguarding,to acting as couriers, to stealing, to killing. High jinks ensue. Each chapter is from one of the assassins or group point of view with funny dialogue, internal monologues or violence setting the scene. One character named for a fruit likes to quote from the children's television show about trains Thomas and Friends. Why? Why not.

I am not saying the book is bad, for some it will be a romp, a manga made real, or a novelization of a film. Years ago I probably would have gone crazy over this, now it just doesn't seem new and in fact for a thriller its a little long. 432 pages is alot to read while tension is supposed to be ratcheted up. I understand there is a movie planned for this, and that it was a big book in Japan. That might be a better mileau for the book. It just seemed a little too much Smokin Aces, 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, Things to do in Denver. . . and other movies for me. Manga fans and Ed Brubaker fans might get a big kick out of it.

I was looking forward to reading this book because it has a great premise. Unfortunately this book really wasn't for me. There are interesting characters throughout this, but I never really connected with any of them. I also struggled with the amount of info dumping and long philosophical conversations that took place. The humor also wasn't for me. There were several moments and characters that were interesting, but a lot of this book felt bogged down by the slow pacing.

I would like to thank Overlook Press for providing me with an ARC.