Genre: Horror

Dyalatov Pass Group Camera Shot

Review: Return to Dyatlov Pass by J.H. Moncrieff

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Right off the bat, I need to preface this by saying that I love the Dyatlov Pass mystery. I’ve listened to podcasts on it, read non-fiction books about it, and if Return to Dyatlov Pass can get your interest in the Dyatlov Pass mystery going? Great. I love the idea that it’s going to be introducing new people to this. And for the most part, I don’t mind the way that they treated the mystery itself.

This was a bit of an edgy book, so I’ll put my content warnings down at the bottom of the post to avoid spoilers.

Return to Dyatlov Pass follows the adventures of a podcaster, Nat McPherson, as she investigates the mysterious deaths of nine Russian students in 1959. These students, in the prime of their lives and with a ton of mountaineering experience, disappeared during a trip through Dyatlov Pass and when a search party was mustered, all they could find was the brutally mutilated remains of the students.

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Down The TBR Hole #2 – The Way We Change

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Down The TBR Hole is a weekly meme that revolves around cleansing your TBR of all those books you’re never going to read and sort through it all to know what’s actually on there. It was created by Lost in A Story and I found out about it from SepiaReads.

Basically, you’re just going through your TBR and deciding whether to discard or keep. If you want a more detailed explanation of Down the TBR Hole, you can find it here.

Currently, my Want To Read shelf is 901 books and I’m cutting it down week by week. I know it jumped a bit since my last TBR, but that’s because I’m also getting rid of doubles on my list as I go.

The books at this point on the list were added to my TBR in 2009 which is ten years ago so… wow. We’re doing this. Let’s go.

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Down The TBR Hole #1 – The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

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Down The TBR Hole is a weekly meme that revolves around cleansing your TBR of all those books you’re never going to read and sort through it all to know what’s actually on there. It was created by Lost in A Story and I found out about it from SepiaReads.

The idea is that your Goodreads Want To Read shelf is probably enormous. I definitely have a problem with just adding a bunch of books to it and never thinking about them again. So, the plan is to go through on a regular basis and choose some books. Figure out if they’re going to stay or go.

Maybe I’ll channel my Marie Kondo lessons and see if these books spark joy before keeping them or going.

Currently, my Want To Read shelf is 911 books, so pray for me, please.

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Battle Royale: The Book that Launched a Thousand Copies

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Battle Royale: The Book that Launched a Thousand CopiesBattle Royale by Koushun Takami, Yuji Oniki

Buy it on Amazon, Buy it on Indigo
five-stars

Koushun Takami's notorious high-octane thriller is based on an irresistible premise: a class of junior high school students is taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are provided arms and forced to kill one another until only one survivor is left standing. Criticized as violent exploitation when first published in Japan - where it then proceeded to become a runaway bestseller - Battle Royale is a Lord of the Flies for the 21st century, a potent allegory of what it means to be young and (barely) alive in a dog-eat-dog world. Made into a controversial hit movie of the same name, Battle Royale is already a contemporary Japanese pulp classic, now available for the first time in the English language.

I don’t really need to tell anyone what a Battle Royale is. Thanks to Fortnite and before that, the Hunger Games, everyone knows what it is. People are dropped into a death map. They need to kill each other. The last person standing wins.

Simple, right?

Only kind of. Battle Royale is a Japanese novel from the nineties written by Koushun Takami. It was groundbreaking in its time not just for the writing, but the shock factor of it. The book was criticized by some for its violence. Where the Hunger Games feels futuristic enough to give us some distance, Battle Royale doesn’t allow it. This isn’t meant to be a comfortable topic that’s made into PG-13 movies. Even in movie form, Battle Royale doesn’t shy away from its horror.

Each year, a single class participates in a Battle Royale. It’s a shock tactic to control the children who are growing too wild for their parents. The class is picked from a lottery and there’s no guarantee that any child will be safe as they grow up. Therefore, everyone’s at risk.

The kids we follow this year? They’re in 9th grade. To put that into perspective, they would be around 12 to 13 years old when they were brought to the island.

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