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You’ve seen the movie The Ring, right? Probably the American one, which isn’t half as creepy as the Japanese one, but never mind, I forgive you.
Spiral is the book equivalent of The Ring 2, which wasn’t half as creepy as the first one, but y’know, the movie was completely different from this anyway. No more comparisons to the movies!
The style of writing isn’t the best. But that might be the translation-effects. I found it a bit troublesome at first, but I got over it eventually and just tried to focus on the story and not the writing.
The book revolves around a forensic scientist called Ando. Ando’s life isn’t so great at the moment; his son died and his wife left him. He’s painfully lonely and seems to struggle with keeping his mind away from his tragic loss.
And his mind eventually gets pulled away from his tragic loss, by a sequence of unusual events. Strange things happen and he becomes obsessed with finding out what is going on. It turns out things are pretty damn sinister, and eventually the mystery becomes more than solving a riddle – it becomes about saving lives.
Yes, it is about a video. What else could you expect? The description of the video kind of left me feeling that the movie had done a better job of making it creepy, but that was the only part that was less creepy. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I’ve never felt more scared reading a book before. No it wasn’t terrifying, but there was something about it…I felt uneasy…but in a good way.
It wasn’t perfect. Some parts were a little unrealistic, like how Ando first became embroiled in the mystery by obsessing over a letter sequence. The ending was a bit silly too, and kind of frustrating, but I guess now that this is my first review, you probably can tell I’m a big ending-cynic.
Either way, one of my best reads of the year. If you want to be scared, I recommend it…I recommend it above anything violent and gore-filled. Definitely worth the read.