By Kinofhera

Score:
9.5 / 10

Quite a rare genre in Japanese novels, a survival thriller.

After an earthquake, a building collapsed and buried quite a lot of people in the basement. Most of these people got rescued or escaped on their own quickly but there was another problem. Deep on the 5th level of the basement, a girl was trapped and she was like Helen Keller who couldn’t see, couldn’t speak, and couldn’t hear. The rescue team only had a drone (model name: Ariadne SVR-III) and six hours to rescue this girl, before the basement got completely flooded by underground water. It’s a race against the clock and a very intense story to read.

I quite enjoyed the overall writing - brief and concise. As a 100% plot-driven story, character building was minimal but still sufficient to get the readers invested. The author really knew what he was doing. When something needed to be explained, there would be a thorough explanation. When the plot needed to move on, he kept it short and to the point and progressed to the next event. There are no long-winded monologues or over-describing (which I hated with a passion). In such a way, the pacing was very smooth and it kept the readers on edge the entire story.

My only complaint was the danger level of some incidents weren’t high stakes enough. Some could even be solved in just a matter of minutes. Or else I would definitely give this 10/10.