After hearing about the death of Koji Suzuki, I revisited the Ring book universe. 20 years ago I read Ring, Spiral, Loop and Birthday and I was hooked. Now I read them again with a slightly different viewpoint and more life experience. It still holds up and works for me.

Suzuki added two books, S and Tide, in the meantime so I got a little extra this time. Tide was never translated into English but thanks to the magic of modern AI (next blog entry) I managed to read it anyways.

If you’re just used to the Ring movies: the books explore a completely different direction than the movies. And it gets weird. So weird, that after reading all 5 books I mapped out the characters and their relationships…