The names are certainly Japanese but Japan is never named. Isn't that a Hokusai landscape in the background? The figure of Kurosawa's Sanjuro seems to stalk the pages, nonchalantly lopping off a head or an arm in passing. The village shrines are Shintoist, the enlightened one is the Buddha. Surely these are samurai we are reading about, shoguns and ninjas. Anyone with a passing knowledge of the nomenclature will identify the setting more precisely. Children are well-accustomed to this mode they will not feel short-changed. On one level this is a thrilling tale of love, violence, loyalty and betrayal, fast-moving, set in a far-away country long ago, where people and places have exotic names. Halfway through the novel their stories converge and it becomes clear that in this intricately structured society there is no such thing as self-determination. One such hostage is Kaede half of her 15 years have been spent in pawn and now she is to be traded in marriage to Lord Shigeru of the Otori clan, who has adopted a young man, Takeo, sole survivor of a massacre in a hill village prosecuted by Lido of the Tohan clan. Two clans invade and annex each other's territory, a third secures itself by arranged marriages and an elaborate system of hostages. Every life is owned by another, but may be owed elsewhere. The feudal society created by Lian Hearn is labyrinthine.
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