Paradise

It's a shame Suzuki's popularity is mainly based around his horror work. Well, it's not even his work, but rather the loose adaptations of fantastic filmmakers. I'm not complaining about the films. I love THE RING and DARK WATER. But, frankly, those were not Suzuki at his best. "Forest Under the Sea" was. LOOP was. This was. His finest writing isn't about viruses or ghosts, it's about people. People struggling to find their identity. People looking to the past for some form of answer. And, while these elements do pop up in his horror tales, they are somewhat lost behind creepy dripping and moldy flesh. Paradise is a near masterpiece. A love story spanning generations; from stone-age asia, to a polynesian island in the 17th century, to America in the '90s. It's a story of people moved to complete the tale of their forgotten ancestors. And it is beautiful. I only had two problems with the book, but they are not overwhelmingly glaring. First, the opening story is cliche as heck. A man's tribe is attacked, his wife is stolen, he sets out to rescue her. It's a basic plot that's been used in everything from Conan to westerns. Thankfully, Suzuki makes up for it in little details and beautiful execution. The second is, near the end of part three, the characters have sensations and experiences bordering on the supernatural. Now, I don't mind ESP being a part of the story. No, my main problem is that the rest of the book is so grounded in reality that these intuitions just pop up out of the blue. Granted, one could argue that Suzuki was making a statement about past lives and hereditary memories. Fine. And, yes, it's a pseudoscience, but it's far less of a stretch than the contents of his Ring trilogy. But, in the end it stands out from the rest of the book and doesn't entirely fit. Anyway, it was a fantastic read. I eaglerly await Suzuki's next publication and hope it's something more along the line of this than his supernatural thrillers.

This was a great book, I could not put it down, basically some stories on theroys of how people got to the south pacific and about how the Monogolians pasted the ice bridge to get to america.

i like the book a lot and i think that even people who never heard of koji suzuki will like it but the people who are looking forward to koji next horror might be disapointed for this is a love story about 2 souls now i say souls because the story has three main storys legend, paradise, and desert were it is two diffrent people each time but you will find out it is the same soul. legend is about an idian tribe that had strict rules on there village and one of the rules was to never draw a picuture of a human or bad things will happen but the main chacter does and then his love gets taken from him and it is about him finding her the secound is paradise were a group of american sailors get lost at sea and washed up on this island were it is truly like a paradise and the last is desert were a song wrighter trys to find his next master peacie and he does by going to a cave and trying to find insperation there. In all it was a good book but i felt it was skipping from day to day and year to year in a matter of parhgraphs fans that are looking for the next hooror book by koji wait till birthday cause you wont find it here