Wow, what a great adventure! If you haven’t heard of it, it’s about an English sea captain who gets marooned in Japan around 1600, and has to adapt to Japanese culture. Lots of politicking, romance, and decapitation. Very loosely based on real people too.
Have you read it? What did you think?
As a sidenote I just found out FX is releasing a miniseries based on it next year!
I just finished it too and I have mixed feelings. It was such a page-turner I couldn’t believe how quickly I inhaled it! Then when it ended I felt so let down. Blackthorne said from the start that he would have revenge on Omi-san for the peeing incident, but that never came. He said he would have revenge on Yabu-san for torturing Pieterzoon but that never came. There was so much double-dealing with Toronaga-san and everyone in his sphere that I felt like nothing said could be trusted. Every deal would be reversed, everything that was ‘kinjiru’ wasn’t so ‘kinjiru’ after all. Toronaga would order someone to commit seppuku and they would be like ‘no I don’t want to’, so Toronaga says “okay you disobeyed me. I respect that. You can live, plus I’ll double your fief.”
When the ending came I had no idea whether Toronaga would win the war or not, or whether anything he said or arranged was real or not. Was Blackthorne going to get a ship? Was his brother going to backstab him?
Also Toronaga took away Omi’s wife AND Kiku and gave them to Blackthorne. Then Blackthorne was just going to live in Omi’s fief as a vassal? WTF? How was that supposed to work?
I enjoyed the book. I realize that was a lot of complaints, but I really loved reading it.