R帝国

I started reading this novel because I wanted to read something dystopian in Japanese. It was dystopian alright, but also difficult and tiring to read at times if I'm honest.

I'm not sure how to review this. There is lots of politics talk, and war talk, and religion talk, and international relations talk, and influence of the media on our lives talk, etc. It explored a lot of really interesting themes, but maybe too many different themes? (at times I was thinking "seriously, you just had to put that topic in there as well?") It was a very bird's eye view kind of dystopia, with a focus on organizations, countries, media, rather than the characters themselves. Also, the main characters themselves were aware of the dystopian nature of their reality from the very beginning, while I prefer it when everything in the world is presented as perfectly fine and normal to a rather oblivious character, leaving it up to the reader to form their own opinion about the world. I somehow found it really hard to relate to, empathize, or even care for any of the characters. I couldn't even really keep the backstories of the two main characters straight if I'm being honest (not sure if that's due to me taking some breaks from reading or if the character descriptions were just weak). It felt like the characters were only an empty vessel to deliver a message, instead of actually being part of a story. I also read some bookmeter comments saying that maybe the book would have been better published as an essay, rather than a novel.

The general themes explored were very interesting however, and also very complex. The biggest one was based around media and public opinion, and around the fact that we only see what we want to see and our tendency to ignore everything else, as to not cause any disturbance to our personal bubble of ignorant happiness.

It also felt really good to be able to read a book with these sorts of themes :)