Shigeru gets his own book, YAY!
Sep. 23rd, 2007 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieI am rather happy as I have just discovered the existence of Heaven's Net is Wide, a prequel written by Lian Hearn to her Tales of the Otori trilogy.
TotO is a fantasy trilogy, but fantasy is almost non-existent: it is set in a world closely modeled on Medieval Japan (not only the culture, society, and even certain battles and sects are the same only under different names, but they mention such historical Japanese people as Yoshitsune). It's beautiful, and poetic, and violent, and romantic, and haunting.
TotO follows Otori Takeo. However, that is not his birth name. When we first meet Takeo, his name is Tomasu, and his last name is not Otori, either. He is the only survivor of a massacre of a Hidden village (Hidden are a Christian like sect, persecuted, the way real Chrstians were in Japan). He is saved and adopted by Lord Otori Shigeru, a brilliant enigma (and my favorite character). From then on, we follow Takeo as he grapples both with his role as an Otori nobleman (by adoption), a former Hidden, and (as it turns out) a member of the Tribe (an organization based on Ninjas) to whom he is related through his birth father. Eventually, he sells himself as a virtual slave to the Tribe, in order to obtain an opportunity to rescue and avenge captured and tortured Shigeru, but he is an ill fit to their honor-less and soul-less ways, and the only thing he hates more than being a bound assassin is his separation from Lady Shirakawa Kaede with whom he has fallen impossibly in (mutual) love.
Well, I finished Book 2 and it was wonderful and I am looking forward to Book 3 (book 4 is about Takeo and Kaede's children so I am less interested).
BUT...BUT...BUT!
Then I discovered the existence of HNiW and I am so giddy. Because it's the book about Shigeru, my favorite character! His messed-up past (SO MUCH angst), and his long-lasting doomed love with Lady Murayama and just everything. YES. All this stuff is mentioned in passing and we see glimpses of it in the Otori books, so the thought of having a novel about it just makes me so incredibly happy.
OMG. Yay. Though knowing how it all ends for him, makes for a rather emo-depressive reading. I mean, Lady Maruyama dying, when her boat overturns, and their unborn child with her. And Shigeru captured by Iida, and his overthrow attempt faied (as he believes at the time) and despite his rank, tortured horribly because he refused to renounce the Hidden, even though it wasn't his faith, because it was something Lady Maruyama believed in and he would never renounce her beliefs. And then Takeo rescuing him and giving him an honorable death by sepukku. Ummm. Yes. Can we get any more depressing? Unlikely.
To add in the fact that he was dispossed by his Uncles, and had to see his firneds and family die around him in that one battle that won Iida control, and his younger brother getting murdered. Very jolly, I can tell ;)
TotO is a fantasy trilogy, but fantasy is almost non-existent: it is set in a world closely modeled on Medieval Japan (not only the culture, society, and even certain battles and sects are the same only under different names, but they mention such historical Japanese people as Yoshitsune). It's beautiful, and poetic, and violent, and romantic, and haunting.
TotO follows Otori Takeo. However, that is not his birth name. When we first meet Takeo, his name is Tomasu, and his last name is not Otori, either. He is the only survivor of a massacre of a Hidden village (Hidden are a Christian like sect, persecuted, the way real Chrstians were in Japan). He is saved and adopted by Lord Otori Shigeru, a brilliant enigma (and my favorite character). From then on, we follow Takeo as he grapples both with his role as an Otori nobleman (by adoption), a former Hidden, and (as it turns out) a member of the Tribe (an organization based on Ninjas) to whom he is related through his birth father. Eventually, he sells himself as a virtual slave to the Tribe, in order to obtain an opportunity to rescue and avenge captured and tortured Shigeru, but he is an ill fit to their honor-less and soul-less ways, and the only thing he hates more than being a bound assassin is his separation from Lady Shirakawa Kaede with whom he has fallen impossibly in (mutual) love.
Well, I finished Book 2 and it was wonderful and I am looking forward to Book 3 (book 4 is about Takeo and Kaede's children so I am less interested).
BUT...BUT...BUT!
Then I discovered the existence of HNiW and I am so giddy. Because it's the book about Shigeru, my favorite character! His messed-up past (SO MUCH angst), and his long-lasting doomed love with Lady Murayama and just everything. YES. All this stuff is mentioned in passing and we see glimpses of it in the Otori books, so the thought of having a novel about it just makes me so incredibly happy.
OMG. Yay. Though knowing how it all ends for him, makes for a rather emo-depressive reading. I mean, Lady Maruyama dying, when her boat overturns, and their unborn child with her. And Shigeru captured by Iida, and his overthrow attempt faied (as he believes at the time) and despite his rank, tortured horribly because he refused to renounce the Hidden, even though it wasn't his faith, because it was something Lady Maruyama believed in and he would never renounce her beliefs. And then Takeo rescuing him and giving him an honorable death by sepukku. Ummm. Yes. Can we get any more depressing? Unlikely.
To add in the fact that he was dispossed by his Uncles, and had to see his firneds and family die around him in that one battle that won Iida control, and his younger brother getting murdered. Very jolly, I can tell ;)
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-24 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 12:29 am (UTC)and spirit of Yuki being alive? too fantasy for me. Plus, the children aren't my thing...
no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 01:00 am (UTC)Mostly, I really liked the son(though I expected to be bored by him at first) And the oldest daughter's romance(I very much liked that plotline and kinda wanted it to be the main focus...ah well...)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-24 10:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-24 04:51 pm (UTC)I am sure I will have finished the third book by tomorrow. Did you read The Last Cry of the Heron? If makes sense from a narrative standpoint and in terms of the previous prophecies (I just had to peak in the end), but I was sitting in the bookstore and biting my lips to prevent myself from crying. So sad, and would have been pointless if the Tales belonged to a different literary tradition. But in the context of medieval Japan it didn't seem to awful all things considered.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 12:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 03:09 pm (UTC)Totally. When I first read Across The Nightingale Floor, it was like wow.
Even after 2 years I still have not bought the third book because I do not want it to end.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 12:30 am (UTC)