« Lazy Saturday | Main | Turning Japanese? »
February 10, 2008
"Across the Nightingale Floor" - a book
A boy on the verge of manhood returns from mushroom picking in the forest near his remote mountain home to discover chaos - his home in flames, his stepfather dead, warriors on horseback taking swords to the secretive members of a persecuted minority religion. "Across the Nightingale Floor" starts fast and never slows down, as the author takes the reader on a galloping journey through a fictionalized feudal Japan.
Our hero takes the name Takeo while in exhile, and find protection from a traveling man with powerful connections.
Meanwhile, a second lead character emerges, the daughter of a tribal leader, Kaede hostage to her father's rival, held to keep the political peace and powerless, as a woman, to affect her destiny. At least, at first.
"Across the Nighingale Floor" is a quick read, similar in structure to many Eurocentric fantasy novels but better written than most.
Author Lian Hearn writes realistically about mean and women, and doesn't fall into the sexist traps prevalent in many fantasy novels. The writing is crisp, the world awash in sound and color.
I picked this up because I'm struggling to get through the dry, history writing of "A History of Chinese Civilization." I'll finish it eventually, but sometimes a person has to take a break. I can't wait to read the next book in Hearn's "Tales of the Otori" series.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at February 10, 2008 09:39 PM