Kappa Quartet by Daryl Qilin Yam

My husband recommended this book to me.  He said it was weird, he wasn't sure of the ending, and that he thought I would like it. So after much nagging (partially because I was in the middle of a series or two) I went to read this book.

This book is a bit weird.  It's totally different to what I was expecting, and being set in Japan with Japanese cultural references, I read the first chapter or so, not really understanding what was going on, but wanting to.

The blurb says:

What does it mean to be in possession of something nobody has seen before? Kevin is a young man without a soul, holidaying in Tokyo; Mr Five, the enigmatic kappa, is the man he happens to meet. Little does Kevin know that kappas - the river demons of Japanese folklore - desire nothing more than the souls of other humans. Set between Singapore and Japan, Kappa Quartet is split into eight discrete sections, tracing the rippling effects of this chance encounter across a host of other characters, connected and bound to one another in ways both strange and serendipitous.

But not having read the blurb, as I was just reading it on my Kindle, I didn't realise any of this.  So, after the start of the book, I finally did a bit of research into Kappas, and that did help.  I don't know the veracity of the Wiki page on Kappas, but it certainly was enough to make me understand more what was going on, as well as making links that I hadn't noticed (eg one of the characters is called Kawatora).

The book is very well written, and it holds your interest.  The chapters are separate from each other, and it's only in the latter half of the book, that there is some cross-over, so in addition to the different cultural references, the book does seem to jump about a bit, sometimes in a dream-like way.

That said, it is very strange.  I tend to like books which either have a happy ending, or all the threads get tied up at the end.  That doesn't happen here, with the ending neither being particularly happy (though it's what the protagonist wants) and it being sudden, so there are many unanswered questions.  When I went back to my husband to ask him why he thought I would like it, he admitted that he didn't think I would, but wanted me to read it so I could explain it to him!

Overall, I think I enjoyed the book, but I don't know.  I don't feel like I have wasted my time reading it (so is not a bad book), and it will stick with me because of its strangeness.