My life in books

Heaven's Net Is Wide, Lian Hearn

This is the prequel to the stunning Tales of the Otori - Across the Nightingale Floor. Grass for His Pillow, Brilliance of the Moon and The Harsh Cry of the Heron. The beauty, the detail, the lyricism, the sense of immersion in another place and culture - all of the things that made the earlier books things of wonder are part of this book as well.

It is the story of Otori Shigeru as a young man, and brings us from the early days of his boyhood right up to the moment where Kikuta Tomasu, who will henceforth be known as Otori Takeo, the protagonist of the Tales, enters his life.

There are no surprises in this book - we already know most of what is going to happen, because so much of the facts and relationships explored here are part of the important history of the later books. We've heard the facts already. In Heaven's Net Is Wide, we learn how they happened, the context and feel and emotional depth of the past, and why it shaped the future we have already read.

Even though I knew, in general, everything that was going to happen, I simply couldn't put the book down until I'd finished it.

Simply beautiful.

Across the Nightingale Floor, Episode One: The Sword of the Warrior, Lian Hearn

Set in an alternate world that seems to have stepped out of the feudal Japan of legend and history entwined, this is a complex and fascinating story told with grace, beauty and simplicity.

A young boy survives the massacre of his family and village, to be taken into the household and family of the enemy of his family’s murderer. As he grows, he shows signs of special gifts found only among the tribe of assassins, and with the approval of his benefactor, he begins his training in the ways and skills that his own father had rejected.

A young girl, held hostage to enforce the loyalty of her family, is selected as a bride to a man she has never met in what appears to be a peace offering between warring factions, but she carries with her a history that is believed to promise death to any man she marries.

A man and a woman, secret lovers who have sworn to marry, are kept apart by war and political considerations, and face being forever separated by forced marriages to others.

And a man has built for himself a nightingale floor, so constructed that, it is said, no one can cross without making a sound.

Such are the beginnings of the Tales of Otori, and I have been captivated.

Note about editions: I am reading currently reading the Firebird editions of Hearn's Tales of the Otori, which are beautiful to the senses in all ways, but which divide each of the original books into two episodes each. This comment, then refers to the first half of the book Across the Nightingale Floor as originally published. The other available TPB editions I know of are the Riverbend editions, which contain the complete text of each book in one volume.