Book Review: Across The Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn
Across The Nightingale Floor
One day, our main man, Takeo is just chilling out in the woods. He comes back to the biggest bummer ever, his whole village being massacred. Takeo then becomes lucky enough to piss off the culprit behind the massacre, but luckily he has a friend in Lord Otori Shigeru. Across The Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn is a wonderful novel set in feudal Japan and deals with themes of honor, descision making, and identity.
I really, really enjoyed Across the Nightingale Floor. It combined many of my favorite things, historical fiction, YA, romance, fantasy and action. I feel that Hearn accomplished that feat in a way which wasn’t awkward or halting.
I felt the writing style was fantastic and kept me on the edge of my seat, so to speak. Across The Nightgale Floor begins with action, there’s no long winded exposition. Instead, we learn everything we need to know gradually. Hearn places faith in the reader, and expects the reader to figure out what they need to know from context, rather than spelling everything out. I like that the author didn’t assume I was a complete idiot.
The characters of this book were awesome. There’s Takeo, the main character, who has assassin genes, but really he might as well be a flower child being as adverse to killing as he is. Iida, the bad guy, is scary! I would not want to meet him in a dark alley. Lord Otoris Shigeru is pretty awesome, he reminds me of that song from Mulan – “Be A Man!” There is also Kaede, she’s a kickass female who is also a looker, according to the prose since men fall all over her.
I definately enjoyed the fact that this wasn’t a crappy Kung-Fu movie in book form, because with the themes it could have turned into that. This book was a great escapist novel, I definately look forward to reading the rest of the series.
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April (Books&Wine) – who has written 1066 posts on Good Books And Good Wine.
April is 24 years old. She is an educator. In her free time she can be found reading, working out, or eating junk food. She often wears her sunglasses at night.
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Great review. I love the sound of this book. The main character sounds familiar… dont know why. Thanks for reviewing this and the part aout drinking a coke while reading it…. thats jsu good stuff!