For most of its length, this is a tense dystopian novel set in a near-future Japan where the state has access to and control of all private information and people are subject to intense computer and video scrutiny. This has resulted in an increase in the number of children who have difficulty empathizing with or communicating with others. The best part of the worldbuilding is how thoroughly Kyogoku inhabits the minds of his characters; they read very much as the products of their society.Then at the end there is SUDDEN SURPRISE CANNIBALISM. That is just not where I expect a book about information security and the sterility of the modern surveillence state to go.
The translation is very choppy feeling and tends to be very repetitive, which I think may be more acceptable in Japanese than in English; a lot of the free indirect discourse would have read better considerably more condensed.