Parasite Eve Paperback – May 20, 2008

Can be hard to understand the pharmaceutical terms but a very emotional and horrifying story. Lots of terms that I was not expecting but along with being entertained by the horror elements I found I was learning a lot about mitochondrial Eve. I also learned a lot about kidney disorders and organ transplantation. I’m so happy that I got the chance to read this book. I really enjoyed the movie and the video game but this book did not disappoint.

I grew up playing the game without realizing it was a sequel to this novel. I struggled through the middle of the book but it really picked up in the last half. Some truly creepy moments.

A Japanese classic, well translated and easy to read. Well, relatively - the one caveat being that the book has a near Moby Dick-esque level of technical detail involving its subject matter. I think that ultimately the book benefits from that level of realism but probably that's a matter of personal preference. After a bit of a slow burn the book develops into a page-turner I had to rip through in just a couple sittings.The protagonist, I believe, is the titular character, but most would probably argue it's her lover - in any case the story is about the two of them coming together and ultimately changing the world. The author was actually working on his PHD in pharmacology when he wrote the book and he makes the idea of a sentience lurking undiscovered in each of our cells hideously believable. If I have any complaint it's that the sequels are only available as Playstation games, but they are not impossible to find...

Having played the two "Parasite Eve" videogames, I was very happy to finally read the original novel upon which the games were based (the games are actually sequels to the book, taking place in the US and involving new characters). Hideaki Sena's debut novel is a strong science-fiction horror story, but it might not be for everyone.This is one horror novel that really gets under your skin, and the final third of the novel is filled with many graphic, scary moments. To put it one way, imagine if Dean Koontz and Michael Crichton decided to team up and write a book together.Sena's background in Pharmacology is evident here--the scientific jargon is at times overwhelming (even to me, and I have a biology degree!). This fact will turn off some readers. As to the complaint that the book is too gruesome--come on! Are we forgetting about Clive Barker's early stories/novels and the splatterpunk craze?If anything, PARASITE EVE's release in English is a welcome step into bringing over more Japanese literature to America, whether it is horror, science-fiction, or contemporary. It just seems appropriate since many American writers are translated into Japanese, but not vice-versa.I enjoyed PARASITE EVE. It's a different kind of horror story, and kudos to Vertical for bringing it to these shores.

I played the video game that came out on the ps1. I loved the game and when I found out that it was based off a book I had to read it as well. The book started out kind of slow but ended great. The entire time I was reading I was comparing the two and seeing how part of the game was taken out of the book. I knew how the game ended and was anxious to find out how the book matched it. There were a lot of "omg" and shocking moments. Moments that they couldn't use in the video game. Overall great game and happy to have seen the author who helped bring of my favorite games of all time to life.

I admit it. I read this because I knew the 1997 Playstation video game was based off this book. Though, from what I understand, the video game is something of a continuation of the events of the book and not directly taken from the book itself.The writing is very scientific. If you don't like getting down to the raw science of a sci-fi novel, then you might not like this too much. I love science and scientific explanations of how things work, so this was a learning experience for me as well as being entertaining. It's like you're being taught biological science, but in such a way that you don't feel like you're "at school", if you get what I'm saying.The plot of the story is great. I love the ideas behind the plot, and the way it makes you question whether or not your own body could rebel against you like that, and you'd have no way to do a thing in the world about it. That said, the writing can get sort of tedious in some places, especially if the author goes into more specific technical detail about things. That can cause the narrative to bog down a little at times. The characters, too, can suffer from this, since the focus shifts off them and their emotional investment in the story and onto the dry science of it all. I think there wasn't enough time set aside to character development in general, though I don't know if this is a cultural thing. This is, after all, a book by a Japanese author, and one of only 2 novels by Japanese writers I have ever read before. The writing style is definitely different than Western literature, so that could account for some of the issues I had with story focus and character development.If you're into science fiction and horror, especially when the two genres are combined, you'll probably enjoy this book.

When I first picked up the book, I was expecting to read and learn more about Aya Brea from the video games, but she doesn't exist in the novel. This did not in any way take away from the story. The story is a slow-paced (which is not a bad thing) horror novel revolving around the main concept of the video games, which was evolutionary mitochondria. Some of the jargon may be intimidating, but there is a section at the back of the book for such words. The story was great, but the pace was a bit too slow to warrant a re-read, though the ending was fairly satisfactory.