Kraytondan Andromedanı oxumuşdum və möhtəşəm idi. Sonra filminin də olduğunu öyrəndiyim bu kitabı qarşıma çıxdı. Triller... Detektiv... Bu janra arada dincəlmək üçün müraciət edirəm. Qatilin kimliyini anlamaq olur bu 1, bunu anladıqdan sonra qəhrəmanlarımızla nəyin baş verəcəyini izləmək artıq heç maraqlı da deyil, bu 2. Bu iki kitabın eyni müəllifi olduğuna inana bilmirəm. Əsərdən 90-cı illərin havasında "die hard" tipində yaxşı boevik çıxdığına inanıram (izləməmişəm). Yəqin o vaxtı dəb imiş belə kitablar.

buku ini menarik banget. pas awal2 membaca, dengan berbagai penjelasan yang menurut saya kurang dapat dipercaya soal orang dan budaya jepang, membuat saya mikir "ah masak iya" dan "sotoy nih soal orang jepang". tapi sepanjang jalan kita diajak menyusuri jalan cerita, dengan metode yang bikin saya teringat gimana Papa Poirot dan om Hastings ato Holmes dan Watson menyusuri perkara, kita akan diajak mikir, dan mungkin akhirnya membandingkan kondisi real dengan apa yang ada d buku ini. a very interesting book indeed pokoknya.

This is my first Michael Crichton novel, and I enjoyed it. It's a page turner! The book came out in January of '92, and you really have to place yourself back in that time period because so much has changed with Japan and the United States since then. Crichton was obviously worried about how powerful Japanese business had become at that time, and there is some uncomfortable Japanese 'bashing?'. I just saw that there is a movie based on the book, but I can't imagine it being as good as the one playing in my head!

This one starts out strong as a pretty interesting murder mystery but quickly becomes obvious that Crichton wanted to use his characters as a soapbox to preach about the Japanese economy in the late 80s and early 90s. I can’t tell if it’s racist or envious but whatever it is, it’s not fun to read. Somehow this is fast paced and hard to put down. Still, I’d say 70% of this involves characters info dumping about how Japanese culture treats “foreigners” from a business standpoint. I have other problems with some characters and viewpoints but I think I’ll just end this review here lol.

This one is a crime/mystery/detection story integrated within a time where the United States and Japan were involved in technological industry wars so as to take a lead against each other. Although the story itself was decent, reading the information penned by the author with regard to the American attitudes towards the Japanese way of making business and vice-versa, at the time, along with their prejudices and understandings was very interesting to read, and which is based on thorough research. Other than that nothing great here.

Διαβάστε και την κριτική μου στα Ελληνικά στις βιβλιοαλχημείες.

Crichton wrote «Rising Sun» (1992) just after «Jurassic Park» (1990) and I read it too after Jurassic Park.
Of course my expectations were lower. I was sure I wasn't going to love it as much as JP. No dinosaurs, no science fiction elements.
This is purely a crime thriller about Japanese business in L.A.

If JP was about dinosaurs and genetic engineering this is a more detective / crime mystery novel where a pair of agents are investigating a murder in Nakamoto's new headquarters, a Japanese conglomerate situated in Los Angeles.

This novel also deals with the controversial subject of Japanese - American relations both in political and economical contexts.

The book begins with the Japanese motto:
«Business is war» and in this book this also becomes literal.
The Japanese are not very cooperative with the police and maybe they're hiding something.
The were quite a few plot-twists as I was moving towards the end.

It was a fast paced action-packed book, and of course with the usual insights of Crichton on technology, culture, and science.

It was adapted into film with Sean Connery (his second role in a Crichton novel adaptation the first being «The Great Train Robbery» (1979) ), Wesley Snipes, and Harvey Keitel.

It is not one of his best novels and I won't recommend it to a Crichton newbie.
It is also a product of its time, with some sexist descriptions of women, described as voluptuous tits carriers, who are also femme fatales.
And of course the Japanese are not the dominant economic power as Crichton believed but China.

This seemed such a departure from what Michael Crichton normally writes about. It just seemed an odd genre for him to tap into, and I'm sorry to say, he didn't pull it off. If you're looking for a great Crichton book to read, move along to just about any of the others..... which, by the way, are plentiful. I'm am a fan of Crichton's for some books.

"Well, the job was all right. It was fine."
"Then what was it?"
He shook his head. "Most people who've lived in Japan come away with fixed feelings. In many ways, the Japanese are wonderful people. They're hardworking, intelligent, and humorous. They have real integrity. They are also the most racist people on the planet. That's why they're always accusing everybody else of racism. They're so prejudiced, they assume everybody else must be, too."

Rising Sun follows a mysterious, wannabe-Japanese, know-it-all, washed-up former detective named John Connor, as he is called out of retirement to help solve the murder of a prostitute named Cheryl Austin that has taken place in the conference room of the Nakamoto Corporation's new building in Los Angeles. Nakamoto is a Japanese company doing business in America, and looking to expand their American footprint, so naturally there is tension and interference between the Americans and Japanese regarding the case. Connor is to act as an expert, and partners up with a flaccid, lifeless active duty Special Services detective in the LAPD, Lieutenant Peter Smith, in the hopes of solving the crime.

I'll be blunt: I hated this book. Every single character in this book is really just a megaphone for Crichton's bizarre anti-Japanese sentiments and theories on how Japan is slowly taking over every aspect of American society: the tech industry, consumer goods, the education system, even the government. Characters go on these long megaphone rants that don't even remotely resemble real human conversation, where they just babble on for literally pages at a time, info dumping endlessly about Japan and how it's taking over American corporations with its aggressive and illegal business practices. These strange fears about Japan taking over America obviously never became a reality, making the book look even worse in hindsight.

Crichton repeatedly moves the story along by interrupting these long, boring character monologues with various phones ringing, either a car phone or a landline. This must have happened at least twenty times in this book. It's pretty sad when a book is so boring that the only thing you can do to progress the story is to make the phone ring and briefly intrigue the reader with the mysterious identity of the caller, and what they're calling about.

In one sequence, Smith and Connor are driving along in a car, and Connor gets a call on the car phone. The conversation plays out, and he hangs up. Then, Smith gets a call right after! And neither call was even remotely interesting. Connor's was a call from a country club about a membership, and Smith's was his realtor calling to see if he wanted to go look at a house on Saturday. The constant phone calls is a poor plot device that is used way too many times throughout this book as a mechanism to keep the story moving, which it didn't even do very well, the calls being as boring as they were.

There are times when Crichton actually does something exciting in this otherwise incredibly boring book, but these moments are always agonizingly short. Like a car chase scene that I think lasted one or two pages, and then it was over like it never even happened. And near the very end of the book, a shootout that lasted, I kid you not, a single paragraph on page 360. Ugh...why?!?! For the love of God, Crichton, why? It was beyond frustrating. Like watching a movie on TV and the only good thing about it being the 30-second commercials you're forced to watch while you wait for the mediocre movie to come back on. Oy vey.

And the reason given at the end of the book for why the murderer killed the girl is so incredibly stupid and unbelievable that it would be laughable if it wasn't so sad. I mean, you read a 400-page book and that's the reasoning you get? The fate of the murderer at the end is equally disappointing, and kind of infuriating. I felt like I'd been cheated, my time deliberately wasted. The entire ending of this book was so incredibly unfulfilling, and powerfully lame.

And I can't conclude my review without addressing the controversial nature of this book, mainly that critics have accused it of being racist against Japanese people. Crichton tried to defend the book, saying he's harder on America in the book than he is on the Japanese. While he certainly insults America a lot in this book, and points out how Japan is superior in every conceivable way, mostly through the rantings of megaphone character John Connor, he does insult Japan greatly in this book, and the things he accuses Japan of are far more serious than the innocuous insults he throws at America, like that its police are inept and that it isn't as successful economically.

Accusing a country, as Crichton does of Japan, of aggressively and illegally trying to take over basically your entire country, and calling them "the most racist people on the planet" (a phrase Connor actually says multiple times throughout the book), is quite a bit more serious. So in my opinion, having actually read this book, it is definitely racist against the Japanese people.

Insulting to both Americans and Japanese alike, Rising Sun is a grave misfire from a great author, and never should have been published. It's a 400-page medium for Michael Crichton to go on a xenophobic rant about his bizarre fears that Japan would take over America, thinly wrapped in the most dull, uninteresting, uninvolving, by the numbers murder mystery you are ever likely to read, and with an ending so bad it still somehow manages to ruin the rest of the book, which wasn't great to begin with.

Only recommended for the most die-hard Michael Crichton fans. I wish I could have been more positive in this review, because I love Michael Crichton, and consider him one of the greatest authors I've come across to date, but this is easily the worst book of his that I've read, and there just isn't much to like here. This was a slog in the worst possible way and is a complete failure, both as a murder-mystery story and as an attempt to convey a broader message. A very disappointing read.

1.5 stars

This book was absolutely fascinating to read from a sociological perspective as someone who has been living in Japan for over 15 years but who was a child in the 1980s and thus had very little conception of Japan at that time. Crichton definitely lets some of his own perspective bleed through into the pages here, which is a bit uncharacteristic for him, I'd say. We get a lot of characters railing against Japan's unfair business practices or against their own American government/business leaders/etc.'s inability or unwillingness to do anything about it.

It's not really a book where you will learn much about Japan or Japanese people, though Crichton at least made some attempt (some which hit wayyy off the mark) to research Japanese culture and language, but it is much more interesting in terms of insight into the American psyche in terms of Japan at that time (obviously, we have to remember that the 1980s were still within living memory of older people of the bitter Pacific War against Japan during WWII).

The story itself is just a standard sort of mystery-murder plot that tries to weave in the international situation, with clumsy but mostly enjoyable results.

I listened to this book as an audiobook, which was a bit jarring as the narrator struggled to pronounce Japanese names and terms...seems like it wouldn't be all that hard to get this right with practice (or a new narrator).

A woman has been murdered in Nakamoto Towers - corporate headquarters of a Japanese conglomerate - on the night of an important event. LAPD is called to investigate and Peter Smith is given the case. He is assisted by veteran cop John Connor.

Rising Sun seems a little dated in theme (full review at https://factbehindfiction.com/rising-sun explains why in detail) and more like a political message than a story. Michael Crichton is warning the reader about the Japanese taking over America one organization at a time, and a lot of his personal prejudices seeped through his writing. This is not a bad thing in itself but the fact that he was so wrong about the larger picture makes Rising Sun relevant only as far as his knowledge about Japanese business culture of the time goes. The best parts according to me are when Connor puts Japanese action into context.

Read it if you're interested in Japanese culture, or if you enjoyed the movie; its an average read as a mystery.

Rising Sun feels a bit dated now that Japan has experienced it's "Lost Decade" and China has become a dominant economic power, but it's still a well-written and engaging thriller. It kind of loses steam after the car chase with Eddie, if the reader is not careful they will be dragged into a morass of technical information about various forms of video tape and how they can be altered, even though these details are semi important to the plot this section could've been cut way down in my opinion, but if you can avoid getting bogged down it really picks up at the end. The eventual culprit was pretty easy to guess but you'll enjoy the way Crichton gets there. A good reminder for readers like me that he wrote more than creature features.

Ich finde ja eigentlich amerikanisches Storytelling mies nervig. Aber hier ist dieses spannende, fast schon reißerische genau richtig. Die Strukturierung des Plots habe ich auch noch nie irgendwo anders gesehen/erlebt. Man ließt das Buch fast in Echtzeit und dabei springt das Buch relativ linear, aber nicht vorhersehbar zum nächsten Handlungspunkt wie ich finde. Irgendwas an den Figuren hatte 'Statement' Charakter. Das mochte ich gerne. Kein Larifari Gelaber wenn es um die wichtigsten Figuren ging. Sowas nervt bei anderen Büchern oft. Will mich gar nicht anfangen aufzuregen