the_scrivener_named_bartleby 's review for:

Curse of Honor: A Legend of the Five Rings Novel by David Annandale

3.75

adventurous emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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On its surface, there’s a lot of things to enjoy about this book.

For starters, I think it’s a very difficult setting to swallow because of it being an Eastern-inspired setting and story as written by white folks. This should not be an issue—it is by the same logic that, say, Vinland Saga is allowed to exist. But the fact remains that the last major appearance of note when it came to the Rokugan setting was in the book quite literally titled Oriental Adventures—which, in spite of its earnest efforts, still brought the setting down to a swathe of well-intentioned stereotypes.

Still, the story in Curse of Honor is told without these problems, in my opinion. There are no forced honorifics or stuck-in Japanese words to scramble for authenticity—only what is necessary. It is told without these problems a respect for the culture and does not alienate the reader nor the culture in its presentation by making everyone some honor-possessed beings. Everyone in this book is distinctly human, living in the society that they do, and they have to balance their wants and desires with that society. My rule of thumb is that I like a story best when characters do what I would do if I were in their shoes; if they don’t, then they need to be well-characterized enough or the situation needs to be concretely established enough for me to empathize with the character’s decisions. Except for the daimyō towards the end of the book, this is mostly followed to a T.

The daimyō by the end becomes emotional and driven by emotion, when all throughout she was anything but, even when faced with stress. This was the only time this was really flouted.

Now here’s where things get political, and it is a spoiler.

I don’t mind a homosexual character. In my mind, Game of Thrones used homosexuality openly and had interesting characters as a result of it. My suspension of disbelief, however, starts to wane whenever feudal societies in particular just handwave the whole affair away. It delegitimizes those struggles and tokenizes them for shareholders. And then other factors start to creep in that cast doubt on everything. The old Rokugan had female samurai, and that they were present has no impact in the story. Then I noticed that only male samurai died in the story—the one female death is a cataclysmic event in the narrative. Over the course of the story, Haru starts out making mistakes that are sympathetic, but by the end is a blubbering buffoon and mama’s boy with a pathetic crush on a disinterested lesbian samurai, when before he had other motives. It all feels cynically made, and like pointing it out would ultimately mark one as homophobic.

I liked nearly all the characters at first, but as the end drew near I only liked Doreni, who had to learn how to

set aside his ehgo and his loss to remember his duty to Crab Clan.

In spite of all this, I have ordered the next two books in the series. I was stunned to learn the writer of this book was deeply entrenched in writing novels for the 40K franchise, which aside from the Ork books have been an exhausting slog to get through and it’s why I’ve been bummed out on trying new fantasy/sci-fi franchise books. Thieves World, Wheel of Time, 40K, and even Lord of the Rings have left me burnt out, but the impressive complexity of Curse of Honor made me excited for Rokugan and got me to like the setting. We’ll see what comes next, and I hope I grow to appreciate this setting even more.