"Floating Coffin"

Anyone who I've talked to for long enough probably knows how much I love the Ring franchise, from the American movie "The Ring" to the Japanese movie it was a remake of, "Ring" (known to many as "Ringu" though that's kind of pointless...but I'm not going to get into a Japanese lesson now), and the novel that was based on, also called "Ring". There are a ton of other books, movies, and even TV series in the Ring universe; I've been in love with this stuff for three and a half years and I still haven't seen or read everything Ring there is out there. But it's okay, because I immensely enjoy every new piece of Ring media that I get my hands on!

I recently picked up the fourth installment of the Ring books, a set of three short stories that take place within the Ring universe called "Birthday". Of the stories in the book, the one I was looking forward to reading the least was "Floating Coffin", a story about the final hours of a "Ring" and "Rasen" (published in English as "Spiral") character's life as she goes through something that I don't want to explain here for fear of spoiling it for anyone interested in reading the books. But in any case, while the character's death was discovered and ultimately explained in "Rasen", it was never seen from that character's point of view. "Floating Coffin" brings that into play. Naturally, I was sure that it would be disgusting and morbid, and I didn't really believe that it would be a particularly pleasant reading experience.

All I can say is that it was kind of stupid of me to doubt that I would enjoy something written by Suzuki Koji, one of my favourite authors. I did not feel disgusted or disturbed while I read the 45 page long short story, though it is a disturbing read to an extent. I was extremely thankful for the fact that the entire story was not just a graphic, detailed account of the character's death and the unbelievable experience she has before her death, but also included background information on the character and her story, and an anecdote about her past that was mostly unrelated to the story but helped to set the mood as being less of a horror story and more of an almost matter-of-fact account of what happened to her.

The story includes a brief recap of what led up to this point, which would help out a reader who picked up this book at random without knowledge of the previous books. It also includes the most background we've ever had on this character, and allows the character to become more thoroughly developed than she was in the past books. It allows the reader to get to know her just a little bit better, and that really does make you feel for her more, knowing what her fate is from the beginning (if you've read the other books, at least). I really appreciated this background on the character, as it made me connect to the character and her emotions more than I had while reading "Spiral". Aside from those features of the story, it describes what happens to the character in the final hours of her life and her feelings and thoughts during that time in a very matter-of-fact way, almost like a textbook explanation of what happened, instead of trying to create an atmosphere of dread or suspense or anything like that (at least, that's my interpretation of the story). While anyone who's read "Spiral" ultimately knows what's going to happen, actually reading it in this detail and finding out every little thing that happened is still surprising and a little amazing, in a gruesome way.

So, for making me feel that way and enjoy this story despite my expectations going into it, I am, as usual, happy to sing the praises of Suzuki Koji. I love the guy. I still have the other two stories in "Birthday" to read, as well as the short stories in the book "Dark Water" that I haven't read yet (I've only read two of them, one being the one the movie "Dark Water" was based on), his first novel "Paradise", his latest novel "Promenade of the Gods", and the short story book "Death and the Flower" which is coming out in February. With all that to read, I doubt I'll be reading much by any other author for awhile, but fortunately I have no problem with that at all!