Post by Frankie on Feb 9, 2015 14:07:57 GMT 10
If you like mystery novels, and you like the idea of living in 17th century Japan, then I have a book you should read!
I've just finished the book "Shinju" by Laura Joh Rowland and it was SO good. I have to admit, I wasn't expecting it - I use Goodreads, and it recommended this to me because of some other mystery books I've read and I thought this would be similar, a light bit of fun. But no, this was so much more than that!
To briefly outline it: Sano Ichiro is a newly appointed yoriki, and has been assigned to investigate a shinju, or lovers suicide. He thinks it may actually be a double murder and sets off to find out what happened, against the wish of his superiors. And it just builds from there, becoming quite a wild ride in the second half of the book. There is also a LOT of detail about what life was like back then, and the conflicts facing Sano due to his samurai sense of duty versus continuing to hunt for the truth. And although I say there is a lot of detail, it's all woven into the story, not just huge dumps of information. The writing is great for the characters too, even the ones who do not have especially big parts in the story are so vivid, I could easily picture them all in my head. The more I read, the harder I found it to put the book down and it was a big reading session yesterday morning to read the final chapters.
It gets a five star rating from me, and this is just the first book of a series. I have another 16 books to read - and with the last book only just published in December, it's highly likely there will be even more.
I've just finished the book "Shinju" by Laura Joh Rowland and it was SO good. I have to admit, I wasn't expecting it - I use Goodreads, and it recommended this to me because of some other mystery books I've read and I thought this would be similar, a light bit of fun. But no, this was so much more than that!
To briefly outline it: Sano Ichiro is a newly appointed yoriki, and has been assigned to investigate a shinju, or lovers suicide. He thinks it may actually be a double murder and sets off to find out what happened, against the wish of his superiors. And it just builds from there, becoming quite a wild ride in the second half of the book. There is also a LOT of detail about what life was like back then, and the conflicts facing Sano due to his samurai sense of duty versus continuing to hunt for the truth. And although I say there is a lot of detail, it's all woven into the story, not just huge dumps of information. The writing is great for the characters too, even the ones who do not have especially big parts in the story are so vivid, I could easily picture them all in my head. The more I read, the harder I found it to put the book down and it was a big reading session yesterday morning to read the final chapters.
It gets a five star rating from me, and this is just the first book of a series. I have another 16 books to read - and with the last book only just published in December, it's highly likely there will be even more.