HALF-DROWNED HOUND 
S (Es)
I never thought I'd say this about a Ring book, but S is, in fact, kind of a banger.
S was a delightful break from the earlier Ring books; finally, protagonists I could care about! And the prose that isn't overly stiff and choppy. Perhaps Suzuki's writing style improved in the 13 years since Birthday's release, or perhaps a new translator helped give it a facelift, but either way, it's the one Ring novel that's really gripped me to the point where I don't want to put it down. I read almost the entire thing in one sitting- which hasn't happened in years, so it's a pretty big compliment.
Once more, Suzuki pivots genres, leaning further into crime novel than horror story- which is fine by me; my taste in genre isn't as selective with literature, and I'll go to town on a good murder mystery. Early on, the pacing is golden; one of our protagonists, Akane, has an ambiguous traumatic event she's still recovering from, which is a significant part of why I couldn't put it down- I had to know what happened to her when she was a girl. The perspective switches between hers and her fiance Takanori's, giving it two main mysteries; he's busy investigating a mysterious video of a suicide that keeps ever-so-slightly changing, which was a concept that I found very fun. The former part of the plot pans out in a very interesting way as well; there's a bit of a social commentary aspect to S, with the serial killer, Akane was nearly killed by as a child, being motivated by his obsession with the Ring movie, which his mother was cast in. (Obviously it's a coincidence, but I do love that the theme of 'I love my mommy and I'm going to kill you about it' is present in all three major branches of the franchise- it's a very interesting one.)
As I mentioned, the main characters are quite lovable- Akane, as I'll come back to, isn't written in the most interesting way, but she's kind and very interesting conceptually, and Takanori is a giant breath of fresh air as a character who's excited to marry her and raise a child with her, as opposed to the characters of Ring and Spiral, who are ... kinda not great about women. It comes with being in a series that isn't great about them itself, I suppose. It also gets back to its roots some; in the last full-length book, the series had strayed from Sadako's story to the point where she was barely mentioned, but she's actually pretty important in this one conceptually. The well is there, even! It's got the well in it!
Unfortunately, S is no exception to Suzuki's annoying tendency to infodump. I've always maintained that one of the major flaws in the Ring series is Suzuki's desperation for each book being able to be read as a standalone book; the series does actively build upon itself, and by the fifth book, it gets to be a lot of infodumping. Functionally, they're not even standalone; they're consecutive books with Wikipedia pages in them. Not only does S do that, and quite a lot of it, there's also part where the problem persists outside of recapping. While our protagonist has been fighting to figure out what's going on with the mysterious video, a significant part of the answers are simply given to him by- you guessed it- Ryuji, who I am honestly tired of and have been for several books now. I don't want to read pages and pages of him talking about who XYZ person is; I want to see people figure it out by themselves. (Perhaps I was spoiled by The Ring actually being a well-paced mystery; you can't always count on that, even in a crime novel.)
Also, I'd be remiss to not mention the consistent problem of Suzuki not knowing how to write women. While I found his description of Akane's PTSD compelling at first, it eventually solidified into her being a constant damsel in distress, seemingly incapable of feeling emotions besides nervousness, only soothed by her fiance. She does have a moment at the end that's pretty badass (and spoiler-y), but that doesn't entirely make up for the time she's spent fainting and shit. I know firsthand how PTSD can make you a bit of a wreck, but when taken to such a persistent level with a female character, it does get kinda weird. Perhaps it's just an unfortunate coincidence, though.
Overall, though, I'm happy with S, and definitely think it was a worthwhile read. While it does have some definite flaws, it's nothing that wasn't present in the other books. Is it a perfect book? Absolutely not, but it's certainly the best Ring book so far.