Review: All you need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka (Kindle)

Five Stars

It goes like this - I'd watched Oblivion and despite its flaws rate it as the best cinema so far this year (2013). I got the blu-ray and listened to the excellent commentary by Tom Cruise and Joseph Kosinski, which led me to the audio commentary for Jack Reacher, a movie headlined by Tom Cruise late last year. There's a lot you can say about Tom, but when it comes to entertainment, there are few that do it better. So I got to wondering what Tom was currently working on, which IMDB told me was a movie called the 'Edge of Tomorrow', based on a Japanese novel called 'All you need is Kill'. There was barely anything online for the movie so I checked out the book on Amazon. It had been translated into english. Three minutes later I turned the first page. It's not a long book, about 230 pages. I started reading Friday night, slept a couple of hours and started reading again Saturday morning. Finished it a few hours later. It was so good and so clever, my first impulse was to read it over again.

Keiji is a rookie soldier fighting for the Japanese army in a global future war against an alien invading force. A war now decades old against an alien enemy called 'Mimics', far superior than human armies. The alliance of nations have joined forces not only in combat but in developing technologies, the height of which are armoured 'jackets', suits worn by male and female soldiers alike, that bring them closer to the physical characteristics of the invading 'mimics'. Having been trained to the peak of his physical capabilities Keiji is propelled into combat for the first time and instantly fatally wounded. Realising he is going to die he makes a last effort to kill the nearest mimic to him. He is torn to pieces and then wakes up in bed, thirty hours before he died. He dies just as quickly that day too and wakes up in the same bed. Realising he has become trapped in a time loop Keiji determines to become the best soldier he can, so that he may survive and live out the day.

In a word: fantastic. There is of course a similarity in the structure to Jake Gyllenhaal's 'Source Code' but this book predates that. I wouldn't be surprised if AYNIK was the inspiration for Source Code. The quality of the story for me is that it introduces wild concepts to crank up the tension but come the end there are no loose ends. Everything is explained, our understanding of the time loop becomes a vital part of the ongoing story. The story has a real sense of humanity laced with the action and sci-fi. I'm not a sci-fi guy generally but this was so grounded in a progression of the human story, great action and character, there was not a line or page that wasn't totally captivating. The invention is just superb.

What didn't I like? Absolutely nothing. I did struggle to fully imagine the mimics - a cross between a starfish and a bloated frog - but that was it. All in all if you like sci-fi, time travel, action or originality, then check this out. Very highly recommended. Can't wait to see the movie.