{"id":444,"date":"2012-06-25T10:02:42","date_gmt":"2012-06-25T18:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=444"},"modified":"2012-06-25T10:02:42","modified_gmt":"2012-06-25T18:02:42","slug":"tokyo-suckerpunch-review-on-goodreads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/25\/tokyo-suckerpunch-review-on-goodreads\/","title":{"rendered":"Tokyo Suckerpunch– review on Goodreads"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tokyo<\/a>Tokyo Suckerpunch<\/a> by Isaac Adamson<\/a><\/p>\n

My rating: 3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

So it turns out Tokyo Suckerpunch<\/em> is out of print, but I was lucky enough to find a copy in a used bookstore. Reading books made out of paper and ink is weird, but I managed, thanks to Adamson\u2019s engaging style sense of humor. I was a little let down by a meandering plot and not much payoff at the end, but if books are for getting lost in on a rainy day, you could do worse than this one.<\/p>\n

I got my copy at a Half Priced Books, one I\u2019d never been to and visited on a whim. Didn\u2019t find it in the sci-fi aisle (which was appropriate as TSP<\/em>\u2019s not sci-fi). Didn\u2019t find it in the mystery aisle (which threw me, since this is clearly a take on the traditional detective story). It was in the mainstream fiction section\u2026 but that is<\/em> where they stow magic realism, right? Looks like I should have taken that as a bit of forewarning.<\/p>\n

Because on the one hand a mash-up of genres seems like it would be a lot of fun. A journalist in Japan covering a martial-arts competition for a teen rag published in Ohio, on the trail of a mystery woman, pursued by the Yakuza and a secretive religious organization, and all of it wrapped around a dead B-movie director. Oops, that sentence had no verb. And TSP<\/em> had no point, either, I\u2019m afraid. The genre-mash suffered from a lack of cohesiveness.<\/p>\n

Which is not to say it wasn\u2019t fun to read, but only as a gaijin<\/em> tourist in Adamson\u2019s version of Japan. Some fun action scenes, some witty dialogue, some good moments straight out of your favorite noir library\u2026 but that\u2019s about it.<\/p>\n

The back-of-the-book blurb calls this a mix of The Big Sleep<\/em> and Memoirs of Geisha<\/em>, with some Chinatown<\/em> thrown in. Can\u2019t say I agree with that. The geisha parts of the novel are incidental, and have little or nothing to do with the plot. It\u2019s an interesting choice for creating a femme fatale, but Adamson\u2019s geisha might as well have been a faerie. And as for the Chandler reference\u2014TSP<\/em>\u2019s main character, Billy Chaka, isn\u2019t nearly as self-loathing as required for such a comparison.<\/p>\n

Go ahead and read the book if you can find a copy. Or I\u2019ll loan you mine. And if you find a copy of the sequels, let me know. It rains a lot in Seattle, so it\u2019s nice to having something to curl up around when my e-reader is recharging.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tokyo Suckerpunch by Isaac Adamson My rating: 3 of 5 stars So it turns out Tokyo Suckerpunch is out of print, but I was lucky enough to find a copy in a used bookstore. Reading books made out of paper and ink is weird, but I managed, thanks to Adamson\u2019s engaging style sense of humor. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Tokyo Suckerpunch– review on Goodreads”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-7a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":445,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions\/445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}