I'm a lover of rpg maker horror games. One of the firsts I played of the genre was Ao Oni, and when I discovered it has a light novel, I just had to read it. (If you haven't played it, I recommend before reading it).

Story - 6
The novel pretty much follows the story of the game, although with new characters. A group of students ends up stuck in a mansion - the Jailhouse - and they have to escape while being chased by a man-eater monster, the Oni.
In the course of the story we get to know more of the Oni, the mansion, the characters and the mystery around it - something we hadn't in the game - from different points of view. Sometimes it's Hiroshi, others Mika, or even Takeshi.
But the more you know, the more it gets confusing and mysterious, what keeps you reading just to know what the heck is going on.

Art - 4
The novel actually has some drawings and even some manga pages with it. While I liked the design of the main characters, the Oni is simply ridiculous childish compared with its monstrous face the game showed us. So, it kinda kills the mood when you see a drawing of it in the middle of a tense moment.

Characters - 7
Hiroshi is the best. He, alone, made this novel worth reading. Even though he was totally far from what I imagined, I was not deceptioned. Every time the novel focused on him, it was totally fun to read.
There's others characters that I liked, but they just felt too cliché or too good to feel real. (Like Takuro, who does some extreme shit to Shun but is forgiven by him because of the power of love and friendship).

Enjoyment - 8
I had fun reading it. Some parts were easy to read (the ones focused on Hiroshi) while others I simply found myself wanting to drop. The narrative on the jailhouse is repetitive, you're tired of they getting stucked, having to solve puzzles, of being chased... it's just tiring.

Overall - 7
It's fun! It's not the best, the story isn't perfect and neither are the characters, but even so, it is an enjoyable reading. It gets you wrapped up in the mystery, and some scenes makes up for the tiring part.


(Sorry for any grammatical error! It's my first review in English.)