The last man on earth builds a robot to bury him, and spends his last month alive teaching her the meaning of death.
One of the worst things Otsu Ichi has ever done; I defended him a couple of posts earlier for doing his own thing even after success, but this reads like a bizarre attempt to channel Bradbury while aiming it squarely at the cell phone novel market. Stylistically precious, the entire affair reads like a fucking Hallmark card, and the lessons are every bit as pat. All the flaws of that awful third story in Calling You, but without an interesting gimmick to give you hope early on. Took me all weekend to plow through the thing.
If you thought Ballad of a Shinigami was high art, this will utterly blow your mind, but I see this much sentiment and puke.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
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I hate it when Otsu Ichi gets all sentimental, and this story is particularly bad. To be honest I don't actually remember it in great detail, nor do I want to, but I recall being particularly sickened at the end when he dies and she tells him to "sleep well". Or she may even have whispered it in her heart, rather than saying it aloud. I'm not sure, but whichever, somehow it was like the distilled essence of everything wrong with this story, and with this side of Otsu Ichi.
ReplyDeleteI hope you're planning to review more books on this blog - a lot of the time I just don't get around to reading the stuff I want to, but but your reviews always make me get excited and burn right through everything.
The idea is pretty much to slap stuff up here as I read it.
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