Summer of Night is a 1991 horror novel by renowned American author Dan Simmons. It's the first novel in the four-part Seasons of Horror series. The great thing is that one can read Summer of Night without feeling the urge to explore the rest of the series. The novel has received much critical acclaim and was praised by American horror author Stephen King. This should be no coincidence since this novel recalls works such as Stephen King's It. Summer of Night offers nostalgic teenage horror that should indeed be appreciated by patient readers aged twelve and above.

The novel takes place in boring smalltown Elm Haven in Illinois throughout the summer of 1960. As the sinister building of Old Central School is about to close its doors forever, a student named Tubby Cooke vanishes mysteriously. A group of twelve year-old students start investigating the case and soon find information about an occult curse that could change their lives forever. This group of students transitions from the innocence of childhood to the seriousness of the teenage years while confronting an ancient evil that most adults are either unaware or afraid of.

Cordie Cooke is the sister of the boy who disappeared who is known as an outsider living in abject poverty as she is being abandoned by her own family. Duane McBride is the intellectual mind of the group of friends who conducts a thorough investigative research on the curse. Mike O'Rourke is a pious altar boy who is friends with the local priest but who also starts having feelings for the smalltown's most beautiful girl Michelle Staffney. Dale Stewart is courageous and protective of his little brother Lawrence Stewart who is impulsive and irrational. Kevin Grumbacher is a loyal friend coming from a middle-class family and is of German descent. Jim Harlen is a grumpy boy suffering from memory loss after falling from a window ledge.

This novel convinces on several levels. First of all, Dan Simmons' detailed descriptions and keen observations truly manage to bring the United States of America in the early sixties to life. Readers learn about specific details such as religious rites, presidential candidates, different types of guns, elementary school education and the difficult coexistence of poor, middle-class and rich families that all have their own flaws and strengths.

The characters in this novel are particularly detailed. Duane McBride impresses as intellectual leader from a broken family. Cordie Cooke convinces as one of the roughest female teenager characters you will ever come across. Mike O'Rourke leaves a mark with his balance between religious faith and daredevil courage. As the novel is told from different perspectives, readers might soon find their favourite characters and appreciate certain chapters more than others. The development of the characters from childhood to adulthood and everything in between is also profound.

The moments when the elements of horror take centre stage are particularly intense in this novel. This novel doesn't only describe an evil curse and mysterious figures wandering about but also doesn't shy away from depicting brutal kidnappings and even the pitiless deaths of teenagers. The novel however never exaggerates such passages as such horrific events are dosed very reasonably and never seek for simple shock value.

The novel however also has several flaws. While the story revolves around a group of young teenagers, an audience of the same age might have trouble reading this novel of about five hundred pages. Summer of Night has several significant lengths in the middle section. Dan Simmons is very descriptive in even the tiniest details which might be tiresome to explore for younger audiences. The vocabulary is quite advanced, complex and intellectual at times which makes the novel slightly complicated to read for a younger target audience. The story itself is comparable to other teenage horror novels such as Stephen King's It and fails to break new ground and surprise more experienced readers.

Making it through the entire novel is even a challenge for adult audiences. However, Dan Simmons' Summer of Night ultimately offers more positive elements than negative ones. His precise intellectual writing style remains unique, the locations are realistic and the characters have much depth. The story might not be particularly creative but is tense enough to make readers want to read until the very end. At the end of the day, I would recommend this teenage horror novel to older teenagers and young adults who truly like taking their time to sit down and read a novel from start to finish for the sake of entertainment. Impatient readers who don't have much time on their hands should however avoid this novel or anything else written by Dan Simmons for that matter.

Final Rating: 70%

Ring, originally titled Ringu, is a Japanese mystery horror novel from 1991 that propulsed young author Suzuki Koji to national and later on even international stardom. It took the novel twelve years to be published in English. Ring was followed by two sequels entitled Spiral in 1995 and Loop in 1998. Short story collection Birthday consisting of three separate tales was released in 1999. The novel series was unexpectedly rebooted with its fifth entry S in 2012 and continued with its sixth and apparently final entry Tide in 2013. This first novel was adapted into four different movies, with the first two in 1995 and 1998 hailing from Japan, the third one from 1999 coming from South Korea and the fourth one from 2002 being an adaptation from the United States of America. Furthermore, this novel was made into a Japanese television series in 1999. Three manga volumes were released between 1996 and 1999. Audio dramas were produced in 1996 and 2015. It certainly wouldn't be a exaggeration to call the original novel a contemporary classic of horror literature.

The great thing about the original novel is that you can read it without needing to pick up its sequels afterwards. The same thing cannot be said about any other entry in the franchise. Now, please be aware that the horror described in this novel is ambiguous, mild and mysterious. People who might be familiar with the movies will find out that some iconic scenes from those are actually missing from the novel. It might also be important to know that the original novel doesn't have a clear ending. Readers are thus invited to imagine the rest and fill in the holes in the story. Whether such trains of thought might lead to a happy ending or a worst-case scenario is up to every individual reader.

The story begins with the tale of two teenage couples, involving two girls who are sixteen years old and their boyfriends who are aged nineteen. They die almost simultaneously of cardiac arrest. One girl dies at home in her kitchen. One boy collapses on his motorcycle while waiting at a traffic light. The remaining couple dies as they are about to have sexual intercourse in a car on an abandoned parking lot. Asakawa Kazuyuki is the uncle of the first victim and a journalist for Daily News. When he hears about the death of the young man on his motorcycle from a cab driver, he starts investigating what might have happened. He learns that the four young people have secretely been spending a night at a recently opened log cabin one week before their sudden demises. Upon investigating further, Asakawa Kazuyuki discovers a mysterious video tape at the lodge that consists of real sequences and surreal passages. The dreadful tape ends with a curse telling the journalist that he will die in exactly one week. The charm by the end of the video that is supposed to tell the viewer how to beat the curse seems to have been overwritten by the four young people who didn't take its message seriously. Asakawa Kazuyuki contacts philosophy professor Takayama Ryuji and journalist Yoshino Kenzo to discover a way to survive the curse.

This novel convinces on several levels. First and foremost, the novel has an eerie atmosphere from start to finish. It would be much more accurate to describe the novel as a psychological drama, mystery or thriller rather than a horror novel in my opinion. Instead of telling the readers every single thing that the characters are experiencing, numerous scenes are cut short before characters die or their deaths are described from the perspectives of bystanders such as a cab driver or a lover on the telephone. Personally, I find this approach creative, intriguing and refreshing as readers are requested to get mentally involved in the story.

Up next, most of the characters from the novel are very interesting. Lead character Asakawa Kazuyuki can neither be described as a hero or a villain which makes him quite authentic and believable as his actions, emotions and thoughts are gradually spiraling out of control. The same thing can be said about supporting character Takayama Ryuji who is willing to help unconditionally and supports his friend tremendously but who has a strange fascination with death and has raped a high school student when he was a teenager himself. Even the novel series' antagonist Yamamura Sadako can't be described as a heroine or villainess. She might be responsible for a terrible curse that kills many people but she is also a victim herself who had to deal with bullying at school, her mother's suicide and being raped and murdered by a doctor. The lines between guilt and innocence constantly blur in this novel.

Another element that is worth to be mentioned is the attempt to explain the curse and its related events from a philosophical as well as a scientific perspective. Instead of just describing the dreadful things that are going on, the author tells through the efforts of Asakawa Kazuyuki and Takayama Ryuji what processes and thoughts might have been leading to the curse. Readers are thus invited to familiarize themselves with these theories in order to accept or reject them as the author doesn't fully reveal what's true and what's false. This intellectual approach to the horror genre is quite unique and should even appeal to those who usually reject horror literarure.

The novel is however not without a few flaws. It has a few lengths in the opening third before Asakawa Kazuyuki actively starts his investigation and Takayama Ryuji as well as Yoshino Kenzo get involved.

It also needs to be stated that the novel's horror elements are particularly mild as long middle sections can be described as a personal drama and an investigative thriller instead. A few more well-dosed thrills would have rated this novel up in my opinion as several of the movie adaptations have actually proven.

Last but not least, the novel's ending is indeed quite abrupt, asking more questions than providig actual answers. While I have been mentioning that Ring can be read on its own if you imagine the rest, the novel's ending might still make you feel obligated to read the sequel that offers many answers but also asks many new questions.

At the end of the day, Suzuki Koji's Ring has been aging reasonably well and is most recommended to readers who like mysterious psychological dramas and thrillers. It should also be noted that readers should be willing to get involved mentally and establish theories on their own while reading the novel. This intellectual approach to literature makes readers participate rather than just entertaining them. Ring has ultimately more convincing strengths than minor flaws and qualifies as a very good to excellent novel that I have been able to read in only three days.

Final Rating: 85%

Bullet Train is a black humour thriller by Japanese author Isaka Kotaro. It was published under its original title Maria Beetle in 2010 by Kadokawa Shoten. The novel is loosely connected to Three Assassins, originally released as Grasshopper back in 2004, as well as to AX published in 2017, both written by the same author. There is no need to read those other novels to fully understand Bullet Train but if you like the author's unique writing style, you may already know what to read in the future. This novel has gotten critical acclaim in the Western world since it was adapted as an American movie of the same title in the year 2022, starring convincing veteran Brad Pitt and excellent young actress Joey King who deserves more recognition. In addition to this, the novel was also incorporated into a manga series called Waltz between 2009 and 2012 and it was even adapted into a Japanese theatre play in 2018.

The story takes place in present-day Japan on high-speed train Hayate that travels several hours from Tokyo to Morioka. While most reviews claim that there are five hitmen on board, there are actually a grand total of eight different hitmen and hitwomen with different agendas on the train.

Composed and well-read hitman Tangerine and his disorganized and frantic partner Lemon are supposed to bring the son of a mob boss and a case with ransom money to a psychopathic gangster.

Nervous alcoholic Kimura Yuichi had retired from his murderous profession several years ago but must meet with a sociopathic teenager who gravely injured his son.

His elderly parents Kimura Akiko and Kimura Shigeru were a feared assassin duo three decades ago and decide to board the train to save their son and their grandchild.

Nanao is a chaotic and unlucky hitman who is supposed to steal the case with ransom money. He keeps contact with his handler Maria via phone who tries to help him from the outside world.

A hitman nicknamed the Wolf gets on the train to find another hitwoman named The Hornet to assassinate her and decides to execute Nanao for a past conflict upon discovering him.

The hitwoman named The Hornet has actually infiltrated the personnel on the train as she takes care of the food cart. Her job is to murder the son of the mob boss and steal the ransom money. She uses snake poison to assassinate her targets.

Throughout the novel, numerous conflicts between all these different characters arise.

On the positive side, the novel's characters are diversified, memorable and quirky. It's interesting to read about their careers, convictions and goals. The character development is particularly excellent despite the novel's relatively short length of four hundred sixty-five pages. The claustrophobic setting of a train that most characters won't leave alive adds much atmosphere to the novel that only increases towards the finale. The novel offers witty dialogues, hilarious situation comedy and numerous unexpected turns and twists. The combination of thriller elements with precisely dosed elements of comedy is certainly quite unique.

On the negative side, the novel might feature a few too many characters. Readers might be confused at the beginning, especially since perspectives are constantly being changed and numerous flashbacks cut the flow of the main story time and again. As the novel progresses, what starts as a somewhat realistic gangster thriller turns into a macabre farce that requests complete suspension of disbelief. It doesn't happen very often but the finale of the American movie adaptation is much more culminative, emotional and even logical than the completely different resolution offered in the novel that ends rather abruptly. Those differences however justify reading the novel and watching the movie to compare their respective flaws and strengths.

At the end of the day, anyone who is interested in contemporary action novels, gangster literature and thrillers with a shot of macabre humour should give Isaka Kotaro's Bullet Train a chance.

Final Rating: 75%

Dear readers,

Once more, I feel like trying out something new to look back upon the wonderful year that is slowly coming to an end. I would like to introduce you to my favourite movie posters of the year. Once again, they are in order of preference. I appreciate each poster for completely different reasons but instead of influencing you in any way, just take a look, let the artworks sink in and perhaps you might even discover an intriguing new film.

1. A Haunting in Venice

2. Cocaine Bear

3. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

4. Sakra

5. Baby Assassins: Two Babies

Dear readers,

I have never attempted this before but I would like to introduce you to my five favourite album cover artworks of the year in order of preference. The artworks speak sufficiently for themselves, so instead of boring you with witty descriptions, I would simply invite you to take a closer look at my five candidates. Enjoy!

1. Haken - Fauna

2. Elvenking - Reader of the Runes: Rapture

3. In Flames - Foregone

4. Blood Star - First Sighting

5. Warmen - Here for None