🚅 Have You Watched ‘Bullet Train’?

[REVIEW] 🐳🪲🤚Three Assassins By Kotaro Isaka

Set in Tokyo, the story centres mainly around The Whale, The Cicada and The Pusher, all professional assassins for hire as well as the ‘anomaly’ that is Suzuki, a former Math teacher on a revenge path. An incident causes their paths to intertwine and soon things begin to unravel, body parts even.

This was an over the top, fast-paced action thriller with elements of dark humour and John Wick-esque vibes. It is supposedly a prequel to the highly popular ‘Bullet Train’? which has spawned a film adaptation releasing next month that I have yet to read. Hence, if there were ‘easter eggs’ or references to ‘Bullet Train’ or vice versa I certainly didn’t catch them, though I caught that “The Shining” reference by the author.

Regardless, the above had little impact in my opinion as this book was capable as a standalone. How the various characters' storylines overlapped was certainly well thought out as was the action sequences, bloody and gruesome (which I totally dig) though the flow was uneven at times.

Each chapter switches between the key characters to keep things moving along though there were several parts that were rather repetitive. The assassins were unique to a certain extent with probable nods to popular culture though given how fast-paced everything was it was difficult to be invested in them. And rightly you shouldn’t with the staggering body count.

Aside, I remain curious about what the author has planned for Suzuki. Probably overly suspicious here but things are way too simple for him here, his humble background, motivations (aside from revenge) and ambition.

All things considered, a highly entertaining read though I would have preferred this in a graphic novel format in all honesty.

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