The Sword of Kaigen: A Theonite War Story

Japanese cultural and social stereotypes have never been described more clearly than in The Sword of Kaigen... And it's beautiful.The story follows two main characters in a small village in the Kaiganese Empire (equivalent to Japan in our world) - a teenage boy whose sole purpose is to be a warrior who will fight and die protecting his family and Empire, and his mother, a former crime-fighter and warrior who lived abroad, who was forced by her family to leave her aggressive and bloody past behind in order to marry a powerful Kaiganese lord. The lord himself, one of the most powerful magic-users to have ever lived, is estranged to his family as one can be. His only point in life is to literally plant his seed into his wife so she can bear him powerful children, and also to very strictly train his children so they can one day become as powerful as he was. Only pride and reputation matter to him, and he represents a textbook example of a toxic patriarch, a male head of his house who never takes no for an answer, who shuts up his wife - he even ordered her to never talk about her past again, because women are supposed to raise children, knit, and remain in the house at all times. You see where all of this is going, right?You see, I only once mentioned a fantastic element/magic up until now, although this is a fantasy novel and magic can be found at all times in the story. This is because the real accent of the story lies in the internal struggles of the characters and their relationships - and never has a fantasy novel made magic, action, and bloodshed so unimportant compared to internal characterizations and struggles until The Sword of Kaigen. EVERYONE is sinful, EVERYONE makes (sometimes fatal) mistakes, EVERYONE is flawed. There will be no plot conveniences, luck factors, no Chosen Ones and last-minute rescues, nothing of the sort that we got used to seeing in fantasy. Just pure fighting skill, social skill, magic skill - and extreme punishments and consequences if someone makes a mistake. This brutal realism (although sometimes heavily clichéd) is perhaps what I liked the most about The Sword of Kaigen, even with the unusual structure of the novel.And this brings me to the next unsual thing about this novel - the pacing and climaxing.This is a VERY slow-paced novel, full of cliché Japanese emotions and behaviors, but very cleverly and beautifully written - you can feel every frown, every shameful glare at ones feet and the floor, every disappointment of a character for not fulfilling his duty as a son, as a father, as a mother, as a friend, as a citizen of an Empire. Many apologies will be given, and you will come to understand and live through all of them.Moreover, the story is so unusually tailored, that there are actually two distinct climaxes of the story - one is an action/adrenaline climax which takes place at exactly 50% of the novel and the action almost stops happening from then on, and the other one is in fact an emotional climax and takes place at around 75-80%. The latter hits you far harder than an action filled climax ever will, and this is the most unusual thing about this novel: the whole structure of the novel and the story is unconventional to say the least, and you will enjoy every last word of it, even when there's 20-25% left to read and the climax is long gone.Now, there's only one bad thing about the novel - over-aggressive use of Japanese and made up Japanese words. I've never struggled so much in my reading life as with this novel during the first 20-30%. I still do not understand why would anyone come up with special words for time and length measurements (almost equivalent to the following: second, minute, hour, inch, foot, mile - that's already 6 unnecessary words that are used ALL the time!). But having already guessed that The Sword of Kaigen will be a huge emotional rollercoaster, and beautifully written, I managed to struggle through the ambiguous words.If you can struggle through the unnecessary Japanese random-ass vocabulary, I highly recommend adding The Sword of Kaigen to your reading list, it just may become your book of the year.Sayōnara!

My rating: 4.5 of 5 starsI’ve got to admit, when I first sat down to read this book, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. It had been sitting in my to-read pile for a few years, and I knew from reading a few reviews and the blurbs of the other Theonite books (now discontinued) that it wasn’t just another Japanese-inspired fantasy, but beyond that I hadn’t allowed any real expectations to develop. In effect, I went in blind, and I am so glad I did.The core story revolves around the Matsuda family, a warrior house famed for their control of water and for their legendary Whispering Blade technique that allows them to form swords made of ice that are said to be stronger and sharper than any other known weapon. For the most part the narrative focuses on Misaki, wife to the second son of the family, and her oldest son Mamoru, as they try to come to terms with the world changing around them and adapt to the growing storm of war approaching their otherwise quiet little peninsula. However, there is also a secondary storyline that explores the wider setting of the Kaigenese Empire, and its relationship with its closest neighbours.Stylistically, the book seems to have been influenced by a mix of manga and anime, with a dash of Eastern (particularly Japanese) heroic fantasy thrown in for good measure, and for me this is a good thing. The action sequences are well-written, easy enough to follow, and capture the essence of those influences really well. But there’s also some remarkably well-paced plot growth and character development that gently pulls the reader forward, building in intensity through to the mid-point of the novel, and the first of two crescendos in the story.Without giving away any spoilers, the second half of the novel shows us how the characters deal with the aftermath of certain cataclysmic events, and here we see the true strength of Wang’s writing as those characters are irrevocably changed by what has gone before. And it really is the characters that make this book so captivating.As well as the beautifully written and realised characters, there’s also a lot of gorgeous world building going on here. The principle locale of the Kusanagi Peninsula is described so well that it’s easy to picture it in your mind as you read. Add to that the imaginative and well-thought-out magic systems presented throughout, and you soon feel like what you’re reading is just a small part of a much bigger whole.All-in-all, I absolutely adored this book and will almost certainly have a look at other works by the author. The series that this one was spun out of has been discontinued in the last few years, but she has a few other books out there that look interesting.If you’ve read and enjoyed Ron J Hayes’ Mortal Techniques books, or just like Japanese-inspired fantasy in general, definitely give this one a try. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.