All You Need Is Kill

It's often said that the movie is not as good as the book it was based on, but All You Need is Kill and Edge of Tomorrow are as good as each other for different reasons. They both share the same premise and a wry and kinetic plot that moves quickly and pulls no punches. Edge of Tomorrow broadens out the world of the book and - as a visual medium - delivers more visceral action scenes, but All You Need is Kill brings us closer to the characters, what made them and what drives them and provides a different… show more.

This book doesn't really need a reason to be recommended. I mean, c'mon, we've all seen The Edge of Tomorrow, and admittedly, I did not read the novel until after I saw the movie. Most Americans don't know much about, less yet come across, Japanese graphic novels unless they're already into that kind of stuff.

Regardless, reading the book after seeing the movie was a pleasant surprise. It's like reading Dreamcatcher by Stephen King after seeing the movie. The movies never do the books justice.

This book is a quintessential version of this type of narrative, following a new recruit, Keiji, as he relives the same battle against invading aliens known as Mimics, who also do their own hive-mind version of time looping.

I’ve always loved how time loop stories use repetition to progressively work through a situation, and following Keiji movement by movement, as he learns how to defeat the Mimics, I really felt like I knew what the experience of a time loop would be like. 

Translated from Japanese, this is the novel that inspired the blockbuster movie Edge of Tomorrow starring Tom Cruise. While fighting on the front lines during an alien invasion, Keiji Kiriya finds himself stuck in a time loop after his death. He finds that every time he “dies”, he comes back twenty-four hours earlier with all his memories intact. It follows the formula of a player “dying” and then respawning, retaining all the knowledge gained up to their death with a chance to use that knowledge to prevent it. Learning from your mistakes is vital in any video game, and for… show more.