Rating: 
Summary: Comically Incomprehensible
Review: Oh, dear.As someone who's read this book in the original Japanese, I was interested to see how it would be translated; Suzuki's book is more than deserving of an outstanding English interpretation. With trepidation, I opened to the first page and began reading. By the third page, I was slack-jawed in a state of shock and horrified amusement. The English version of The Ring reads as if the original manuscript was run through Babelfish or a similar machine translator -- the entire novel seems as if it was done word-for-word without any regard for structure or readability. It is, quite frankly, one of the worst translations I've ever seen. In short, this book is an incomprehensible mess, impossible to stomach in doses of more than two pages at a time. Avoid at all costs.
Rating: 
Summary: A haunting detective story: clues and cures and curses
Review: One must stay cool under pressure. Ever virus has its anti-virus. And sometimes you must must set a thief to catch a thief, as the saying goes. These are the lessons of Koji Suzuki's thrilling novel "Ring."
A regular guy, Asakawa has everything a modern Japanese guy should want; A nice wife and a happy son, a decent, interesting job, and few surprises. Life is good. Then his niece and 3 of their friends die under very peculiar circumstances, and Asakawa, a newspaper reporter, gets curious. Following the trail leads him to a distant bungalow, an ominous room, and a cursed video tape. Suddenly, Asakawa finds himself with a seven-day lifespan, and goes on a desperate hunt for the antidote to this infection.
Knowing he is not up to the task, Asakawa enlists the aid of the most evil person he knows, who also happens to be his best friend. Brilliant, strong and intelligent, Professor of Philosophy Ryuji Takayama also happens to be a nihilist and a serial rapist, a secret shared only by Asakawa. Together, they begin to track the mysterious video tape through the dark avenues of Japanese remote-island female Shamanistic traditions, and the secrets of the eerily beautiful Sadako Yamamura, who disappeared at age 18 almost 35 years ago.
"Ring" is much more of a detective story than horror, as the majority of the time is spent with Asakawa and Ryuji tracking clues, deciphering the images on the tape, and uncovering the past. Like the diggers they will eventually become, together they pull up buckets of earth, revealing new layers and getting closer to the truth with each shovelful of dirt. At the bottom, Sadako waits for them, but whether she is a vengeful spirit or a wounded soul remains to be seen.
The Japanese male psyche is also on harsh display, with the juxtaposition of family man Asakawa and the mystery of Ryuji. Rape, a much more taboo crime in Japanese society than most Western societies, is a driving force of "Ring," with the casual attitude portrayed by Asakawa and Ryuji being as horrible as the innocent deaths. Sadako herself, with her alluring sexuality and beauty, is siren, untouchable and lethal yet irresistible. A man and a woman in one body, cursed with phenomenal powers, she is both victim and villain.
Rating:
Summary: This is Japanese prose?
Review: Ouch. What could have been an intriguing story gets sunk by dreadful writing. I've read a fair amount of translated Japanese fiction and all of it is head and shoulders above this. The style is graceless and leaden, and a lot of the story is flatout illogical as a result. Whether the fault lies in the original or in the translation is something I'll leave to Japanese language readers to decide. Suffice it to say this is barely readable.
Rating:
Summary: Best Read In A While
Review: Please, if you like the movies RINGU or THE RING, read this book. It gives a more descriptive and in-depth story about things that weren't entierly explained in the film. You will learn why they had to make copies, what the images on the video are, and how the video was made. I thought to movies were scary, but the book is more of a mystery/suspense. A MUST READ!!!
Rating:
Summary: Truly Gripping - despite unlikeable characters
Review: Ring is a great book, filled with suspense and fingernail gnawing moments. I was drawn into the novel from the first page, and found myself manically turning pages despite the fact that the characters weren't particularly nice or noble or kind or, well, likeable. In some ways this became an interesting edge to the book and didn't negatively effect the mounting tension.
Asawaka is a journalist who, through the deaths of his niece and some of her friends, stumbles upon a cursed video and must go on a quest to find out what he has to do to stop himself dying in a weeks time. I expected Asawaka to be a typical leading `hero' character, perhaps a loving family man with a tenacious desire to find the truth. Instead he was a workaholic who couldn't even be bothered to take time off work to go to his niece's funeral (in fact, he only becomes interested in her death when he realises that it relates to other strange deaths). Worse still, his best friend is a self-confessed rapist - and yet Asawaka does absolutely nothing to get him to stop or to tip the police off. I mean, come on, we aren't talking about somebody stealing paperclips here, this is RAPE.
Don't get me wrong, the book was compulsive. I can't wait to read the next two in the trilogy and am excited to see where it all goes from here as the ending was a bit of a cliffhanger. I agree with the other reviewers who say that the book read like a translation, it certainly didn't flow like most of the books I read. Some of the prose sounded awkward and the phrasing could be clunky. But somehow because I knew this was a Japanese book it seemed to fit and didn't annoy me.
Overall Ring is a great thriller and a real page-turner. I feel compelled to say that there was quite a sexist element running through the story, particularly in the way Asakawa referred to and treated his wife. Some examples are when his friend scolds Asakawa for becoming emotional:
`You're talking like a woman now. If you've got time to bitch and whine like that you ought to use your head a bit more.'
And when Asawaka doesn't like the question his wife asks him (although it is a very reasonable question):
`He wished his wife would act like her name, which meant `quiet'. The best way to seal a woman's mouth was not to reply.'
At one point there is a particularly odd section when Asawaka meets his best friends stunning girlfriend, Mai. Remember that at this point Asawaka is trying to crack the code to save his and his friend's life and yet he drifts away and imagines Mai `wet and naked'. With only a few hours left to save himself and his family? Absurd!
JoAnne
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good....
Review: Ring of course the movie is based on this book; in Japan it was released on the title Ringu, and it was remade in America as The Ring staring Naomi Watts. Now of course the book is TOTALLY DIFFERENT from the American version. Investing the deaths of four young people, under their autoposy showed they died from heart failure. Now Asakawa a reporter is now investing the death's of these young people. Now he traces their steps to this hotel he rents for the night. It is then he discover's a tape that is unmarked. On that tape is a strange images on the tape. At the end of the tape it say's whoever is watching this tape will die in seven days. So now with only a couple of more day's to live, he the teams up with a serial rapist Ryuji to help him discover some of the images on the tape. One of them being a volcano in rural Japan. As they get deeper, it gets scarier! In a long time, I have never read a novel that chilled me through the bones. Koji Suzuki has been called the Stephen King of Japan. This novel is worth reading to anyone who wants to be scared. Especially King fans.
Rating:
Summary: The cutting edge
Review: The book flap describes Suzuki as the 'Stephen King of Japan,' but this cool, ultrasharp book couldn't be less like a Stephen King. Based on a sense of profound cynicism, the narrative is mostly held up by a brutal and unsavory professor of philosophy, Ryuji Takayama, who claims to have raped several women, but who is still in some profound and strange way a more decent person than the protagonist, a weak and innocent regular guy who still manages to be incredibly, malevolently selfish. While some scenes do frighten in a lingering way, the novel's substance is in its ideas, and it's very much a period piece, very modern. The prose is minimal, but still manages to create a decent sense of setting and character, and the characters, even the 'sacrificial lambs' who obligatorily have to die in the first few chapters, seem like real people. Even if you normally don't go in for horror novels or anything with a hint of the paranormal in it, I think you'll like this one. Trust me. And, uh, remember who recommended it to you. That's H-e-n-r-y P-l-a-t-t-e.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome!!--must-have
Review: This book is possibly the best book I have ever read. After seeing The Ring in October when it was released in theaters, I loved it. I became obsessed and read every website on Earth about Ring. I then purchased Ringu and loved that also. I decided to get Ring, which "started it all", as some put it. I loved this book because it explained some things that were unclear in both Ringu and The Ring. As you may have read in previous reviews, Ring is much different from both movies so if you choose to buy it, you will still be surprised throughout the book because it isn't something you have ever read or watched. This book is about Asakawa ( a reporter ) and Ryuji ( his friend ), two men in Japan, who team up to solve the mystery of an 'eerie' tape that is responsible for the death of Asakawa's neice and 3 of her friends. I agree with the review that states that this book is NOT poorly translated; I never once had trouble reading and understanding it. For those who have seen the movies, the ending will come as a surprise. This book is a must--have for Ring fans.
Rating:
Summary: I have been unable to put this book down!
Review: This book was definitely worth waiting for! I had watched the movie The Ring, and although it was a good movie I felt like I lacked a great deal in storytelling, i.e. why Samara was wrecking havoc on people. This book is not only an introduction into Japanese culture, it was spellbinding!
Rating:
Summary: A very nice story...
Review: This is a sharply, almost scientifically written horror story. The author manages to offer a modern view of Japan society as it tries to put together a very objective and technological life style, along with very subjective issues as ethics, culture,
traditional family links, etc. One of the principal characters is a researcher who does science this way; combining an older philosophical and spiritual approach with modern knowledge of biology, physics, and others. All in all, my particular opinion is that this is an excellent book telling a very smart and entertaining horror story. The book is better and deeper than the japanese movie which in turn is superior to the american version.
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