Ring Series

Recommended Reading Order

1. Ring

   • Kōji Suzuki

   • 392 pages
   • 14 hours of reading

   Asakawa is a hardworking journalist who has climbed his way up from local-news beat reporter to writer for his newspaper’s weekly magazine. A chronic workaholic, he doesn’t take much notice when his seventeen-year-old niece dies suddenly – until a chance conversation reveals that another healthy teenager died at exactly the same time, in chillingly similar circumstances. Sensing a story, Asakawa begins to investigate, and soon discovers that this strange simultaneous sudden-death syndrome also affected another two teenagers. Exactly one week before their mysterious deaths the four teenagers all spent the night at a leisure resort in the same log cabin. When Asakawa visits the resort, the mystery only deepens. A comment made in the guest book by one of the teenagers leads him to a particular vidoetape with a portentous message at the end: Those who have viewed these images are fated to die at this exact hour one week from now. Asakawa finds himself in a race against time – he has only seven days to find the cause of the teenagers’ deaths before it finds him. The hunt puts him on the trail of an apocalytpic power that will force Asakawa to choose between saving his family and saving civilization.

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   1

   3.8

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2. Spiral

   • Kōji Suzuki

   • 288 pages
   • 11 hours of reading

   Ever since his young son drowned to death, Ando has suffered recurrent nightmares. His wife has come unhinged after their devastating loss, which doesn't help. Work is his only salvation these days - and it's performing autopsies. But Ando's depressing world of routine and regrets is about to change when Ryuji Takayama, an old rival, appears before him as a corpse to be dissected. Through Ryuji's bizarre demise, Ando learns of a series of mysterious deaths that seem to have been caused by an unknown - or rather, forgotten - virus. Behind it all lurks a suspicious videotape to which Ryuji seems to be leading Ando from beyond the grave. A choice more sinister than the one in Ring faces the doctor at the end of a breathless chase through places and minds. Spiral is not only a sequel to Ring but also a commentary on it that breaks down the story and recasts it entirely. Spiral is written as a stand-alone work.

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   2

   4.0

3. Loop

   • Kōji Suzuki

   • 480 pages
   • 17 hours of reading

   Stunning Japanese novel with a chilling twist - the follow-up to Ring and Spiral. Kaoru's father, Hideyuki, lies dying in a Tokyo hospital, his body ravaged by viral cancer. This nightmarish incurable disease has sprung out of nowhere and has begun to affect organisms all over the planet. Twenty years ago Hideyki worked on a virtual reality project which replicated evolution on earth, called the Loop. The project failed when the organisms within it inexplicably stopped reproducing normally and started cloning. Nearly all of the other scientists who worked on the Loop are already dead - from cancer. To get to the heart of the mystery, Kaoru must travel to the other side of the planet, to the Mojave desert. The secret he encounters there will overturn everything he thought he knew about the world - and his own identity. In this suspense-filled follow-up to 'Ring' and 'Spiral', Suzuki masterfully confounds the reader with a stunning new twist on the Ring mythology.

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   3.6

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4. Birthday

   • Kōji Suzuki

   • 224 pages
   • 8 hours of reading

   På omslaget: "This much-awaited return to the Ring universe features three short stories focusing on its female characters, with a theme of birth."

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   4

   3.5

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