โ Scribed by Takashi Matsuoka
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
East collides with West in this complex, epic tale by Matsuoka (_Cloud of Sparrows_), in which the ability to see the future is transferred from generation to generation in a Japanese clan. The mid-19th-century inheritor of the clan's visionary powers is Lord Genji, a powerful samurai warlord who favors western style modernization for Japan but faces fierce opposition from the antiforeigner element. Compounding his political troubles is his peculiar love affair with a beautiful young American Christian missionary. Emily Gibson has been in Japan for six years, doing her missionary work, trying to hide her feelings for Genji and translating a series of mysterious scrolls recounting the history of the clan. As she reads the scrolls, she discovers inexplicable references to her own life and her association with Genji's family. Meanwhile, flashbacks describe centuries of tangled relationships and events that result in Genji's rise to power, focusing particularly on beautiful Shizuka, Genji's 14th-century forebear, who has the sharpest vision of the clan's future. The convoluted tale is bursting with too many characters and jumps around in time too much to be a smooth reada 13th-century Mongol invasion, assassination, clan warfare, romantic rivalries and an estranged son and heir to Genji's rule round out the packed narrativebut Matsuoka's rich, authoritative storytelling makes this an engrossing read.
Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Matsuoka continues the chronicle of Japanese nobleman Lord Genji he began in Cloud of Sparrows (2002). In 1867, American missionary Emily Gibson finds herself increasingly drawn to Genji, her Japanese benefactor. For his part, Genji, the head of the beleaguered Okumichi clan, struggles to control his secret admiration for the entirely unsuitable foreigner as he attempts to reconcile the increasingly obsolete world of the shoguns and the samurai warriors with the inevitable encroachment of Western ways and customs into his homeland. Translating a series of secret scrolls containing the history and prophesies of the Okumichi clan, Emily is startled to realize that the past reflects the present when she uncovers an ancient tale of treachery, valor, and forbidden love that seems to both parallel and presage her own situation. Stretching back and forth through the centuries, Matsuoka weaves a timeless tale of intrigue and romance. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved
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