Mirua has an amazing voice in their writing. The writing is so poetic that I was captivated by it throughout the entire story. I loved reading about these character and usually I am a character person but the writing was by far my favorite part of the novel. I'm so happy this was translated and I was able to read it.

very great race, like the Boston or New York Marathons, deserves a story. And by that I mean each great race needs a work of fiction to help us feel the drama. Most of the time we get a long history of the contest, which is fine, but not so exciting. Sometimes you get an account of just one of those races, like Duel in the Sun: Alberto Salazar, Dick Beardsley, and America's Greatest Marathon. Oh, boy – that might be better than fiction. But still not fantasy, not a bedtime story. So, a bestseller all about a classic race, finally translated and exported to the US, is certainly welcome.

The story opens with Kiyose, something of a house captain at a small university in Tokyo, who spots a shoplifter cutting through the night with breakneck speed and flawless form. He hops on his bike and manages to chase down the blazing Kakeru, and asks the question I love to hear: “Do you like to run?” He entices Kakeru to live in Chikusei-so house with a rent he can’t refuse, but it’s packed with a group of straight-up eccentrics.

It isn’t long before Kiyose springs it on the group: they’re there to train for the Hakone Ekiden, a 2-day relay in which each participant runs just about a half-marathon, most of it in the hills. He makes it a condition of the low, low rent, so no one backs out. But only Kakeru and Kiyose are real runners, so their odds of even qualifying are pretty grim.

I’m a little ashamed, as a marathoner and track coach, to have been ignorant of the Ekiden. But the more I learned, the more I liked. Try not to decipher all the complicated details and seeming calculus it takes to understand how to qualify. As Kiyose explained it, my head hurt and I daydreamed a bit. But if you just look at it as a cool but grueling competition that’s cherished by Japan, that’s good enough.

When you have a book with ten characters, there’s a tendency to want to develop them all. Not gonna happen, at least not with much depth. But Miura does very well, providing each with funny quirks and interesting backstories to keep everything moving. The foci, of course, are the past demons faced by Kakeru, and what might just be Kiyose’s last chance at glory. So, while the side quests of the other characters are neat, the drama really lies with those two.

The writing seems a little…literal? We say, “show, don’t tell,” and there’s a lot of “tell” here. “He had a lot of determination toward his goal,” is the style. I wonder if it’s due to the translation, however. The ideas and feelings were there, but often the descriptions didn’t have the pizzazz.

What does match the excitement is the action. Yeah, the strange wording is there, but the plot is key. Miura raises the stakes gradually, giving each Chikusei-so runner a reason to go for it. She also introduces something of a villain from another university.

And the race. That probably could’ve been a novel in and of itself. The sights and sounds are clear and thrilling. Miura takes us through just about every step of every runner, and includes their thoughts, anxieties, and triumphs.

And if you’ve ever achieved a lifelong running goal, whatever it might be, you’ll relate to the Chikusei-so runners. There’s ten of them, so you’re sure to identify with at least one: be it the back of the pack guy, the record-setter, the would-be coach. It’s the crux of the novel for a reason: we’re meant to join the guys in the race, to experience it in some small way for ourselves. It’s what you’d want from a running novel, and you get it. It’s also got an ending that makes sense, doesn’t go all Hollywood, and leaves you with a smile.

Did it make me want to run an Ekiden? Eh, only if someone needs an old, slow leg. But it’s books like this that keep me running.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an e-copy of this novel!

Quick story time. From the end of 2018 to the start of 2019, the anime Run with the Wind was airing on Crunchyroll. I quickly became obsessed with the series and would count down the minutes to each new episode. I even started going on runs because of this show (and then quickly had to quit after injuring myself...). After the series ended, I hopped online to see if the anime was an adaptation and was ecstatic when I saw it was based on a Japanese novel. I was then, subsequently, devastated when I saw that said novel was not translated into English. So, imagine my excitement when I log into Netgalley and see this book sitting in the new editions. I immediately requested a copy and then sat anxious for a few days, prepared to contact HarperVia and beg for an early edition. Luckily, they approved my request and no begging was necessary. So, to say I am a <i>bit</i> biased to this novel would be an understatement.
As you might have guessed, I absolutely loved this novel. I often struggle to sit and read for long periods of time without getting antsy, but I found myself regularly sitting down to read this book for hours. There were quite a lot of characters in this book, but none of the main cast felt like caricatures. This book is in 3rd-person, but mainly follows Kakeru's perspective. Because of this, you are mainly getting his opinions of these characters and their interactions. Even though Kakeru is the main character and gets the most development, all the other characters do get their moments to shine. This book has a very simple plot and because of this, there is plenty of time to focus on the characters and their relationships with each other (as well as their relationships to running). Even though I already knew how the story was going to end, I was completely invested from start to finish. I highly highly recommend this book (and the anime). Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to go for a run.

Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the free proof in exchange for an honest review.

Three solid stars.

I'll start by saying that before receiving this ARC I was not familiar with this story in either anime or manga forms. I think that it would probably work better for me in those forms, as the illustrations and movement would be more dynamic than in the form I read it in.

However, there are some really beautiful themes and ideas here that are inspiring to me as an aspiring runner who will never reach the heights these gentlemen do in the sport. In this story, we have themes of determination, motivation, teamwork, goals, etc. Each person this 10 person relay team has their own skill level and motivation that they bring to the group, and each are committed to seeing this goal until the end, even if running wasn't a preferred activity for them to start. Through this journey, we see what determination and following through on commitments can do to one's personality and the way one sees oneself in relation to the rest of the world.

The first half of the novel is a set up and info-dump on these 10 characters and their relationships with each other in the space of this running goal that they've set mostly. We get some more in-depth glimpses of character, particularly with Kakeru and Kiyose, who are the most elite runners on the team from the start.

The goal they set up is inherently insane for some of the team members, and it was inspiring to see how commitment and follow-through improved times for the weaker runners (and by weak, I mean not automatically running at 5K under 20 minutes...which is a tough pace!). The second half focuses on racing, strategies for being most successful to their goal, and running the relay they had set out to train for--what amounts to essentially 10 half-marathons split among the 10 member team over the course of 2 days, to be completed as quickly as they can. Make no mistake--even the weak runners are more elite runners at this point (we're talking an average of 1 hour 10 min for a half).

As a runner who ran my first marathon this year, I was attracted to this story and loved the descriptions of running and how it feels to be really connected to the action and your body while running. Where this story fell more flat for me was mostly with the characters--we didn't spend a lot of time getting to know most of them, and I would have liked to know more than just what they were studying in college and how they decided to commit to seeing Kiyose's dream come to reality.

Here are some quotes I loved:

"No, it's strong," Kiyose said. "You can't pull through a long-distance race with speed alone. The weather, the course, the twists and turns of how the race unfolds, your own condition, your state of mind. You have to analyze all these different elements with composure. You have to persevere and keep moving forward even when a stretch of the race turns painful. What a distance runner must have is strength, in the true sense of the word. To be deemed strong is our honor, and that's what we strive for as we run every day."

"What a primal and solitary sport this was. No one could support a runner. It didn't matter how many people were watching or whether their teammates were running right next to them. In that moment, each runner was utterly alone, a single entity engaging the full mechanism of their body to keep going."

"The power to keep moving forward in the face of pain. The courage to keep fighting the battle within oneself. The tenacity to keep striving to overcome one's own limits rather than external records."

"What Kiyose was battling against weren't other teams. His real opponents were time and the old injury in his own leg."

Let me tell you, I have thoroughly enjoyed this book. The writing was amazing, This is about perseverance and never giving up!! Thank you for this incredible book!

quick disclaimer before i jump to the review proper: i'm not a fan of running. im not an athlete but if i were, track wouldn't be my first choice. anyway, i watched the anime adaptation of this novel some years ago. it's because of the anime that i became interested in this novel, not the other way around. that said, later on i will be making comparisons between what i watched and what i read.

now my review: this novel is incredible. Yui Kajita's English translation of Shion Miura's prose is so beautiful. i'm not fluent in Japanese yet so I won't be able to make observations on how closely the original has been conveyed, but I trust yui kajita's translation to represent what shion miura had originally written.

the omniscient POV works well for this novel and i attribute its excellence to the skills of the author: jumping heads here even without page breaks is so freaking smooth, im in awe. i've found myself pausing multiple times throughout my read to marvel at how well the POV shifts were done.

onto the comparisons to the anime: they made fujioka so handsome in the anime which is a great choice overall--fujioka in the novel is a clean-shaven monk-like student reminiscent of Buddha himself. i mean ok anime-Fujioka has those zen qualities too but you won't look at him and think "monk;" you'll look at him and think Superman, Supermodel, Superior face card etc etc. also some scenes were altered to fit the anime's 23-episode pace, which I found didn't make much of a deviation from the novel anyway. tl;dr here: if you liked this novel you'd like the anime as well, and vice versa.

the characters are so vivid, you'd grow alongside them as they discover their personal reasons for running (': despite the fact that they only started running because they were forced by haiji lmao ily kiyose haiji

Thank you NetGalley and HarperVia for the eARC.

"Running on the same track didn’t mean everyone would arrive at the same destination. All runners were looking for their own goal that awaited them somewhere."

I was interested in reading this translation of Run with the Wind because the 2018 anime adaptation has long been on my radar. I’m glad I got to read the novel first so that I could fully appreciate the way author Shion Miura combined a deep appreciation for the sport of running, a plethora of research regarding the track and field world and Hakone Ekiden (a real-life college relay marathon that takes place across two days after the new year is rung in), and an unforgettable cast of characters whose individual and collective journeys make up the heart of the story.

I’m both a former casual runner, and an avid sports manga/anime fan, so I am exactly the target audience for this novel. But readers don’t have to fall into either category to appreciate the story of an underdog team that bands together to try and achieve an impossible goal. Each of the 10 runners gets fully fleshed out, and the novel really brings their psychological journeys to life, whether it’s the prodigious Kakeru Kurahara, a former high school track star who is trying to overcome his disillusionment with the sport, the unathletic manga fiend Prince who struggles to keep up with everyone else, or monomaniacal ringleader Haiji Kiyose, who leads the team through sheer force of personality even as he pushes his body beyond its limits.

There are friendly and not-so-friendly rivals, local community members, and family who provide support and friction along the way, and although long-distance running requires a tremendous amount of individual will and perseverance, the team aspect of the story really takes center stage. Characters learn their own strengths, break through mental and physical barriers, and embrace the immense collective challenge of running the Hakone Ekiden in their own ways.

Miura’s prose captures both the romantic and pragmatic sides of running. She’ll offer up training regimens and running routes in painstaking detail, but also describe a character’s run as “a meteor ripping through the sky.” The inner lives of the characters are a big focus, and the final two chapters, which cover the race itself, are breathtaking—you really feel like you’re running the race alongside all of the club members and experiencing the culmination of everyone’s personal journeys. Overall, this was an invigorating and meaningful read.

Thank you to HarperVia and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an e-arc of this book.

This book did a rare and unprecedented thing: It made me consider exercising. Wry and passionate and full of life. Had a lovely time with it

As someone who had a horribly short-lived running career (one summer) that was not motivated by any good or even well-meaning ideas about fitness, I read this book & kept thinking, "Should I try running again?" Probably not, but I never dreamed that I would even consider running again, so something about this book is obviously incredibly affective.

This book was adapted into a manga and then into an anime all under the same name, and for some reason when I picked up the book I thought in my head, "Oh, isn't there a sports anime with this same name? That's funny." And didn't think about it again until halfway through the book.

It does read in a beautifully cinematic and dynamic way that lends itself to a visual adaptation, and the translation is truly top notch. I've heard people who don't generally like reading works in translation from the Japanese describe it as "dry" or "wooden," and for plenty of works I can see where they're coming from, but this book has so much emotion and humor and passion that I would recommend it to even the most skeptic of people. I'm incredibly grateful that it has been translated, and I genuinely think the English translation could lead to a resurgence in popularity for the story, or a second wind if you want to be funny.

My favorite aspect was how few of the Kansei team were devoted, lifelong runners. The fact that they were average college students, some of whom had their whole lives planned out and some who had no idea what they want or who they are. Besides Kakeru and Haiji, none are considered "runners," but in the end each of them runs his own race for the sake of the team, and none of them have any regrets about it. There is no feeling among the members who didn't fall in love with running and transform into "runners" that they wasted a year of their lives just to run a race they had no chance of winning. It's valuable even just to take that chance.

The ekiden itself is a large portion of the book, and it's impressive how thrilling it was from start to finish, despite the fact that they were literally just running for two days straight. The way we only see inside each of the members' heads while they're running their course of the race felt really fulfilling to read; the characters were so well characterized that I didn't feel like I was in a strangers head, and the new insight into their inner self was consistent and believable.

Just a really good book!! I don't know why it took me so long to read, but I basically read 1-2 chapters at a time until the race began and then I didn't want to put it down, lol. I highly recommend & I will be watching the anime to see how it handles the material, but I suspect I'll like the book more.

Huge thank you to NetGalley and HarperVia for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. Run with the Wind will be available on October 15, 2024.