Reviews with content warning for Stalking - Battle Royale

This book was pretty good.
Obviously (or maybe not) I went into this comparing it to Hunger Games. It faired pretty well. If anything I probably liked it more. If you're looking for a book like Hunger Games but with more murder (first off get therapy), this is a good pick. It has the potential to be a 4-5 star read.
However, that is not what I'm giving it.
Despite the good characters, twists, and overall plot, this book was very obviously written in the 1990's (specifically 1999). There is major misogynistic language throughout the book. Nothing outright,

in fact there is a character who is shown to have horribly sexist thoughts, like "women are property" type stuff. The author makes it clear that this is a horrible person.

but there is a lot of stuff like "oh I can never beat this boy because I'm a girl and girls are weak". It's not as overt as that but it conveys a similar message.
Another reason for the rating is because of a specific chapter that follows a gay character and how homophobic it feels.

The gay character is described as following a character who is particularly brutal and looks like might win. The gay character is then described as having "stalker behavior" and being super feminine. The author mentions that he has the audacity to care about his looks during this murder game. He has a mirror that he holds to make sure he looks good.

Generally, the way this character is portrayed is very homophobic and uses lots of homophobic stereotypes.
The plot is good, don't get me wrong, but its hard to ignore the misogynistic tones throughout the book. The ending was enjoyable and my attention was kept during the whole book but reading about "weak girls" really brought me out of the experience.

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thegr8estangell's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

I'm glad this author wrote only one book. I really liked the premise of this book. I think they were way more brutal in this book than in the Hunger Games (a series with a similar plot). I liked the way that some of the deaths were from the 1st person POV of the person being killed and other deaths were from different POVs. I wished we got more POV time with Kiriyama.

The pacing of this book was all over the place. Sometimes it was fast and tense, other times it was slow and arduous. There were so many flashbacks to stupid elementary school grudges and stuff like that. It got old pretty quick. I skimmed alot of those since they had little to nothing to do with the actual plot of the story.

What really bothered me about this story was the sexism and causal homophobia. Do I expect anything different from a middle-aged Japanese man in the 90s? No. Does that mean I have to look over that to enjoy this book? Not really no. I can still criticize it and still think the book is okay. Noriko was about as useless as Sakura during the Zabuza arc in Naruto. She was written as a damsel in distress and that was all she played the entire time. Just a helpless little school girl who just wanted to survive and was content with letting her big strong men of Kawada and Shuya protect her. Shuya was this weird, white knight character that felt like every girl had a crush on. He was so popular but didn't know it. That was really annoying. He was always this, ethical person during the whole thing. He never had to make a bad or hard choice about killing someone. There was no morally grey with him like there was with Kawada. He was in this situation where he had to kill people but he never had to make that tough decision without weighing the consequences. Kawada was a cool character. I liked him. He was the only rational one in the whole book. I know it's because this was round 2 for him, but still. Good character.

The BIGGEST plot hole was the GOD-TIER status of that stupid bullet proof vest. After one bullet, those things are done. They don't last 14 other bullets to the chest, a shot gun blast, and 300+ rounds of an UZI. They don't. That's not how they are made. That was plot device that got tired real quick.

Overall, I think the violence and stakes were done well. But the actual plot needed some work. Would I read this again? No. Would I recommend this book to someone? Maybe, depends on the person.

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