michaelwindrunner's review against another edition
3.0
I loved the start of this book and I had high hopes. The lone big hearted ronin samurai trying to find his place in the world. He is an honor filled person in a world of complacency. However, the story, somewhat abruptly, changed from that start. His character shifted yet his writing lack clear direction (although I maybe get this... see below). He does still have honor, but he is a little backwards with it at time. The end result is that I didn't really find myself rooting for him very much. He just seemed too dense to see the world for what it truly is. In fact, the only character I really felt was living their own life was the "green tiger."
I will say that I loved the themes of corruption and the influence and power of evil. I suspect that our protagonist lacking clear direction helps to reinforce this theme and I suspect that he will grow in future books to represent a counter point to the evil in play in this book.
The short of it is... I will keep reading this series for at least one more book because I believe that some of my concerns with this book were deliberate, and will be addressed in the rest of the series.
I will say that I loved the themes of corruption and the influence and power of evil. I suspect that our protagonist lacking clear direction helps to reinforce this theme and I suspect that he will grow in future books to represent a counter point to the evil in play in this book.
The short of it is... I will keep reading this series for at least one more book because I believe that some of my concerns with this book were deliberate, and will be addressed in the rest of the series.
danperlman's review
4.0
I stumbled across this one when I was looking for some martial arts books for study, and it looked interesting. Since the first volume was available for free on my Kindle Unlimited account, I gave it a spin, and rapidly went on to the sequels. Although set in feudal Japan, and following the story of a ronin, a masterless samurai, the writing style is very “western” in its approach, which gave them an interesting flavor – sort of like watching a completely foreign culture and concept develop from an outside observer’s eye. The author has a nice little quip on his site, “Writing fiction set in a far different time and place is challenging. The key is cram as much background information into your brain, let it percolate for a while, and see what bubbles out.”. And, no question, that’s what he’s done – creating a real image of a very different world than I’m familiar with, and at the same time, letting it develop in a way that I could actually visualize it, without feeling lost. I loved it.
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