A review by kblincoln
Darkly Beating Heart by Lindsay Smith
3.0
3.5 stars, actually.
I really wanted to like this one. It features a Japanese-American girl in Japan (and more or less depicts some of the issues someone who *looks* Japanese but isn't culturally/linguistically Japanese might confront) named Reiko who time travels back to samurai days when she finds a hidden shrine.
Back in the samurai days (or the period right before the Meiji Restoration when the military bakufu was clashing with loyalists to the emperor) she is Miyu, the daughter of a local samurai who is revild by the village.
Reiko is running from some pretty heavy stuff, her brother tried to commit suicide, she's got a terrible break up, and also was kicked out of school for threatening behavior. And her attitude in Japan is not...great. She's prickly and angry.
And Miyu's life, while it seems to smooth out her rough edges a bit, ends up making things worse. For the last quarter of the book Reiko/Miyu almost entirely focus on revenge and how everyone deserves to die. Over and over. In both present times and past. And its...wearing. I lost interest in Reiko as a person because she crossed some fictional character line from messed up into stark raving revenge-monsterly and it wasn't fun to go along for the ride.
There's just a lot of ...hatefulness in this story. So, read at your own risk. In terms of its portrayal of samurai life...hmmm. Some things were good, some made me shake my head (what samurai would take basically a serving girl into a bathhouse in her own Inn and take care of her, saying things like "call me if you need anything"). Just wasn't to my taste.
I really wanted to like this one. It features a Japanese-American girl in Japan (and more or less depicts some of the issues someone who *looks* Japanese but isn't culturally/linguistically Japanese might confront) named Reiko who time travels back to samurai days when she finds a hidden shrine.
Back in the samurai days (or the period right before the Meiji Restoration when the military bakufu was clashing with loyalists to the emperor) she is Miyu, the daughter of a local samurai who is revild by the village.
Reiko is running from some pretty heavy stuff, her brother tried to commit suicide, she's got a terrible break up, and also was kicked out of school for threatening behavior. And her attitude in Japan is not...great. She's prickly and angry.
And Miyu's life, while it seems to smooth out her rough edges a bit, ends up making things worse. For the last quarter of the book Reiko/Miyu almost entirely focus on revenge and how everyone deserves to die. Over and over. In both present times and past. And its...wearing. I lost interest in Reiko as a person because she crossed some fictional character line from messed up into stark raving revenge-monsterly and it wasn't fun to go along for the ride.
There's just a lot of ...hatefulness in this story. So, read at your own risk. In terms of its portrayal of samurai life...hmmm. Some things were good, some made me shake my head (what samurai would take basically a serving girl into a bathhouse in her own Inn and take care of her, saying things like "call me if you need anything"). Just wasn't to my taste.