Shinichi Hoshi (Japanese: 星新一) is recognized as one of Japan's most influential science fiction writers of all time, He published more than 1,000 of his signature "short-short" stories. Some call his crisp, no-frills prose the "Haiku of Science Fiction."
I'm pretty proud of myself for getting through a whole novel in Japanese when even just a few months ago this seemed like an impossibility. This book was a somewhat fun read but since it's aimed at primary school kids it lacks a lot of depth. It really felt like things just happened for no reason, and the actual plot was kinda messy and plot lines were wrapped up pretty sloppily. The characters especially lacked a lot of depth and were really frustrating at times. In the second story, Pero sacrifices himself to save Nobuo and Miki, and when they get back to the ship and Nobuo (a like 10 yo boy) is crying about his dog dying Miki just tells him to suck it up and move on with the mission, like wtf. The exploration part of the book was cool though and I learned a lot of interesting vocab. Not bad but even the books that I read as a kid had a ton more depth than this, so I'll probably just look for Japanese translations of my childhood favorites to reread next. Low-Mid 6/10
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.