Bryce's Blog

Well, things look like they are going pretty well, considering that I have covered half of the books I received from my recent order. Also, with one series completed, I guess it is time to get the other one finished off. Today, I will be reviewing Doubt Volume 2 by Yoshiki Tonogai.

As I have given a series synopsis in an earlier post, I will not go over it again.

The hunt to find the wolf amongst the group continues, as the suspect list goes down to three.

However, with a lot of conflict between the survivors, the wolf may be the only one to walk out alive.

I am not too sure about this one. Seeing Yuu and Hajime going after each other was pretty understandable. After all, knowing that a killer is among a small group of survivors would drive people to kill other, because they think that the other person is responsible. Yes, people will suspect each other in a larger group, but they would not necessarily end up killing each other right then and there. I also liked how Hajime used a corpse to lure out the wolf. With three people there and two being childhood friends, one of the others would have definitely reacted. In fact, if the wolf thought that the survivors believed that they were dead, the wolf could kill off the other two without being suspected. Of course, if Hajime were the wolf he could have done it to make Yuu more vulnerable, because he did think that Mitsuki was dead. Other the other hand, I would have to agree with Yuu that using a corpse is pretty messed up, just to lure out a killer. Outside of that, I cannot really think of anything else that I particularly liked. The fact that the survivors were suspicious of each other and that Hajime came up with a decent way to lure out the wolf did make things look pretty good.

Although I did like some things about this volume, there are certainly some issues. First, I did not really like that there were two wolves. Now, the idea that having multiple killers behind everything when we only suspect that one individual is a killer can be interesting, especially because Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express featured a murder committed by the exact number of people found on juries in the US. Here, however, it turned the whole storyline of Doubt into a rip off of And Then There Were None. At least in And There Were None, there was one person responsible for making everyone go crazy by killing people himself and fake his own death. In Doubt, not only did the second wolf fake their death but also did not even bother getting their hands dirty, leaving it to the one turned into a wolf, even up until the end. Another thing that I did not like was the fact that one of the wolves was killing people just because they lied. Yes, dishonesty is something that should be frowned upon, but there are people out there that are far worse than those that use their mouths to lie. Out of all those people, it just had to be those that lied with their mouths that got targeted in this volume. While the reason everyone was attacked by one of the wolves was stupid, the fact that the main wolf did not get their own hands dirty after faking their death turned this into a rip off And Then There Were None.

Despite the good found in this book, the negative outweigh it enough that the only reason to read this is to complete the series. I only recommend this to those that read and enjoyed the first volume.

What are your thoughts on Doubt Volume 2? Do you agree or disagree with my views? Do you have anything to add? Feel free to comment.