A review by fox_at_the_circus
Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki

challenging dark emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

It took me a while to get into the book. I felt like the later stories were better than the earlier ones, but maybe I just got used to the writing style. 
I liked all the setups and ideas for the story, but it often felt like it didn't go far enough. I wished the worlds and society of them got explored ore broadly and without a focus on just 2 or 3 people, but that is definitely personal preference.
The characters on the other hand were very unlikeable or at best very hard to understand, which also made reading more difficult for me. Especially because for longer dialogues there are no indicators of who's speaking, so I always had to read them 2 or 3 times to make sense of it. But that could also me a concious choice of the author.
The book definitely made more sense to me, when I found it was written in the 70s/80s and the author died young, it also explains all the very heavy depressive undertones. It definitely stayed on my mind for a long time after finishing it and made me think about the themes of the book, so for that I appreciate it.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings