A review by anikaslibrary
The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I really liked this book, I think that it did an incredible job at focusing on how devastating war can be and gave an accurate representation to the violence, gore, and trauma that people get from it. I got through almost 60% of the book when I hunkered down and finished the last 40% in one night because, although the climax was in the middle, the bread and butter (for me, at least) was in the last half of the book. I just thought it was so real especially considering the genocide currently happening in Palestine, the innocent men, women and children that are destroyed by bombs and airstrikes, it hit so close to home.
The Palestinian women who are raped and forced to see their children murdered, the children who are Hiroshi's age, having to take on the responsibility of taking care of their siblings because their parents were murdered, the men who are stuck under the rubble and debris of bombs that took their lives and the lives of their entire lineage. So devastating.
Wang does an incredible job bringing those traumas to light in a way we can all empathize with no matter what part of the world we're from. 
I thought the character development was phenomenal as well, I get that there are opinions of people in the book who shouldn't have had a redemption arc however, I think it provided a real look into how different people react to traumatic events. There's no way we can simply forget all the harm they've done but there is some amount of understanding we can have for them when they show their growth and try to better themselves. 
While I genuinely loved a lot of this book, I thought it started off pretty slow and I ended up getting bored even in the action scenes because it'd been so slow and confusing until then that I hadn't even noticed it coming and didn't really care. There was a lot of histories and world-building that didn't make sense to me and I didn't understand if we were in a dystopia because of the mix of old, ancient powers and new technology that could've obliterated and ended the war before it even started. 
The ending was a little confusing to me as well, I could see that it might've made sense if it set up another book but it clearly didn't. That being said, if we take this book as the standalone it is, we can see that Misaki's story comes full circle and it shows how Robin was the young boy she had thought the world of but learned (through growing up) that she and Robin would've been completely different and maybe even wrong for each other. I think it tied her story well and gave her an ending with no regrets.

There's so much I could say about this book, it being a standalone is so insane to me because I feel like I need to follow the Matsudas' story more but I appreciate it for what it is and rate it a 4.75 in my opinion. What I loved about this book in terms of character development, grief, the brutality of war outweighed the cons I first had about this book. 
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