Ryu Murakami, From the Fatherland, With Love

I think I stumbled upon From the Fatherland, With Love during a search for speculative fiction. It instantly appealed as it is set in Japan and North Korea and the initial premise sounded both promising and believable.

The Plot: Japan's economy is devastated, there is mass unemployment and people are living in makeshift camps in public parks. Young men who have been in either the perpetrators or victims of violent crimes congregate in abandoned warehouses in Kyushu. They posses a unique set of skills, some are expert bomb makers, one can decapitate animals with custom built boomerangs, another boy breeds poisonous insects and frogs. Japan teeters on the edge of complete lawlessness, and North Korea seeks to take advantage. A small team of North Korean forces invades the city of Fukuoka, if they are successful  a further 120,000 troops will follow.

Rating: ««¶¶¶ (2.5/5)

For my review see under the jump:-

Haruki Murakami, Underground

Carrying on my recent Murakami kick, I've recently finished reading Underground. Different from the majority of his other work, Underground is a non-fiction book of investigative journalism into the 1995 Tokyo subway attack.  

Although I have heard of the attack before, I'm a little to young to remember any of the details, so the subject of this book was new to me. For those of you who don't know, the 1995 attack occurred when members of the Aum Shrinikyo cult released sarin gas on five subway trains. Thirteen people dies, fifty were severely injured and thousands more suffered ill-effects.

Rating: «««¶¶ (3/5)

For my full review, see after the jump:-