A review by jsmithborne
Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, Volume 1 by Fumi Yoshinaga

4.0

I read this first volume a while back, after it won the Tiptree, then noticed that my library had all 6 volumes at one branch not too far away, so I went and grabbed them. Read the whole series over a few days (took a little break from my Dresden files obsession), and realized how very very little I know about Japanese culture and history. I was just baffled for big sections of the books; I couldn't keep track of who was who or why they were doing what they were doing. Sort of the immersion/drowning method of reading. It was really fascinating on the whole though, and the concept is just so freaking cool that I just had to plow through.

I'm still going to read volume 7 when it comes out, since volume 6 ended with [something along the lines of] "and that was the thing that led to the biggest scandal of the era...".