Author: Steve Bein
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Rating: WORTHY!
We have a new strong female character in town: Mariko Oshiro – and I love her! This is the start of a series, of which Year of the Demon is the sequel. I'm not a fan of series, but of this one, I could become one based on volume one. Series, too me, seem like a lazy and convenient way of milking money out of readers by offering nothing more than retreaded stories, bypassing any real creativity. Whether this series will end up that way remains to be seen.
Mariko is a Japanese detective – the only one in her elite police unit, and her life isn’t easy. Since only about 10% of the Japanese police force is female (officers and civilians) this is entirely credible. She doesn’t automatically command respect as a man would in her position, and her boss really doesn’t like her. Nor does he believe she belongs there, but there's a reason for this other than mere chauvinism. He will not cut her a break, but she gets a break in disguise when she’s moved against her will from the narcotics squad to take on the investigation of an attempted theft of a sword.
There are three known Inazuma swords extant in the world, and these are named: Tiger on the Mountain, Glorious Unsought Victory, and Beautiful Singer. One of these is owned by Professor Yasuo Yamada, an aging and almost blind scholar, and a master swordsman. Mariko isn’t thrilled by the investigation or by Yamada, but he grows on her as she learns more about him and the sword. It seems that an ex pupil of Yamada’s, known as Fuchida Shūzō, works for the 8-9-3, which is what ya-ku-za means (based on the worst hand you can get in a card game). This criminal organization works hand-in-hand with the police, the latter turning a blind eye to some of its business activities as long as the organization does not let, hard drugs like Cocaine into the country. Fuchida has other ideas and believes he can trade a deadly and valuable ancient Inazuma Samurai sword for a cocaine shipment, and launch himself into a criminal career of his own.
What Mariko doesn’t grasp to begin with - and only reluctantly comes to accept - is that there are three swords in play and each of them not only has a name, but magical qualities associated with it. She sings to him when he draws her and she wants to control him. She will not tolerate rivals. Fuchida is literally in love with her. He refers to his sword as a female and sleeps with it in his bed at night. When the drug dealers under his oversight become a bit too loose-tongued about Fuchida’s plans, the city of Tokyo starts seeing a body here and there which has evidently run through by a sword, and Mariko begins to realize there’s more going on here than a simple sword theft.
There are some technical problems with the writing. I saw "straitened" instead of "straightened" at one point, and a phrase like "Mariko’s re-read the same paragraph" which made no sense, but in general the writing was good. Also I had issues with the flashbacks. There are several of them and the first one really annoyed me. I wanted the story here and now, but the author insisted upon retreating multiple times into various points in Japanese history to tell stories of these swords.
These really brought the story to a grinding halt, and were not nearly as interesting to me as the story told in the present. It was annoying to get repeatedly torn out of a story I was really into and flung back into the past for tens of pages. After the first flashback, the others were not nearly so annoying, but rest assured you can skip them and not miss anything - with the exception of the last of the flashbacks, set in World War Two, which is important if you want to fully understand the main story's conclusion. That said, the flashbacks were intrusive and too long.
Another annoyance was the goze - a blind female "seer" - whose "predictions" were - just as with modern charlatan psychics - so useless as to be a parody. I don't mind psychics in stories where they fit (as she does here), in a fantasy story, but it's such a ridiculous cliché that they can never actually say anything clearly, that they're usually more annoying than they are beneficial from my PoV, and are practically worthless.
Those quibbles aside, I very much enjoyed the story overall, and really I liked the main character Mariko who seemed totally realistic to me. I loved the way the ending was written, so in the end, I fully recommend this novel.
