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.
Thank you for posting this! I haven’t read this since I was a kid. I read some of his other books too and watched the miniseries with my dad. I will have to keep a look out for the new adaptation.
One of my favorite books ever! I’ve read it several times and it gets better each time!
It sparked my interest in books set in those times, and perhaps you’ll enjoy “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet”, " The Tale of Genji" (not set in that time but fantastic nonetheless) and of course, the rest of Clavell’s books in the Asian Saga.
Oh yeah absolutely enjoyed that book, and wished I read more of the Asia saga by James Clavell to know how it fits in that even bigger story. Cause I really enjoyed the sort of chess game that was the plot (and reminded me of the best Epic fantasies in that way)
And no I did not know there was another adaptation of this story coming our way. Did see the previous miniseries from Paramount on blue-ray. With John Rhys-Davies (the actor who played Gimli in LOTR) as Rodrigues as an absolute highlight.
So I knew about the Asia saga before I finished the book, and because I didn’t really look into it I assumed it was a continuation of the story… Man was I bummed when I learned each were practically self contained stories. I wanted to read about Blackthorne building ships and sailing to England!!
Still might have to give them a try, I heard that Tai-Pai is also really good.
nope not all series, have continued stories. That is also why I wanted to read the rest over time, to get how it fits in the overall story of the series.
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