Chain Mail: Addicted to You

Chain Mail: Addicted to You
Hiroshi Ishizaki
TOKYOPOP
ISBN: 1-59816-581-X
Fiction, Young Adult
Reviewed by Shannon Frost

“Would you like to create a fictional world?”
For teenage girls Sawako, Mayumi and Mai, the answer to the question had been an unhesitant “yes” when they received the email with this proposition from the mysterious sender Yukari. Desperate to leave the ugliness of reality behind, the girls create a story online with each playing a key role; a junior high girl stalked by dangerous young man, the obsessed stalker who wants her for his own, the young girl’s tutor and romantic interest, and a staunch female detective out to save the young girl’s life. Bound only by their cell phones and the desire to retreat from the problems of their own lives, the girls find solace in their story, Chain Mail, until their fantasy begins to cross into their reality.
Filled with suspense, Chain Mail may be written with young adults in mind, but the dramatic tension of the story rivals that of many adult thrillers, and the scatterings of Nietzsche philosophy add further sophistication to the intricate writing. Just as the girls constantly check their website to read new entries to their story and add their own, so the reader is also compelled to keep turning the pages, anxious to not only read what the girls will write in their story, but how their lives are affected by it. Set in Tokyo, the city is described in vivid detail, making it come to life with the importance of any of the characters as the girls travel through it. Creatively written with an interesting twist at the end, Chain Mail is a novel to be picked up by anyone who enjoys suspense and true to life characters.