8-31-05 Battle Royale by Koushun Takami - Fiction

5 - Reminiscent of "The Long Walk" by Richard Bachman, aka Stephen King, but bloodier. The characters are built well, slowly revealed through memories and flashbacks. A little difficult to keep track of who's who because of the combination of the foreign names and use of numbers (Girl 1, Boy 1, Girl 2, etc.) but there is a character list in the front that includes each character's name and number.