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randomprogrammer 's review for:
The Sword of Kaigen
by M.L. Wang
So, this book is written by an American from Wisconsin who has one white and one Chinese parent. The main characters in the novel are Japanese-based, and there is a non-trivial amount of the Japanese language in the book, from the character names, to the fighting styles, and the honorifics. I spent the first couple hours of the book cringing as I read what was clearly non-native Japanese fanfic. I've seen as many Studio Ghibli films as the next guy, and there is a big difference between native Japanese content using -kun and -sama honorifics and between hearing it clumsily shoe horned into an English narrative. The whole time, I felt like I was reading something written by a teenager at their first anime convention.
To make it worse, my version was narrated by some white dude who had clearly never heard a word of Japanese in his life. Japanese is not like French or German, with a bunch of unique sounds that do not exist in English. With only a couple exceptions, any sound you can make in Japanese can be easily produced by an English speaker. With maybe an hour of coaching, any American narrator would have no problem pronouncing the Japanese words. And yet somehow, it's like this narrator managed to intentionally butcher every word. I'm not sure there was a single Japanese word in the entire book where he choose the correct vowel sound.
Kun is not pronounced kuh-n, it's coo-n. It's not fun-yaki. It's foon-yaki. Ni is not nigh, it's knee. Tousama isn't two-sam-ah, it's toe-sah-mah. It just goes on and on and on for hundreds of pages. Like I get it, you're a random white narrator, you aren't going to sound fluent and have perfect pitch accent, but holy shit it was like he intensionally chose to use the wrong version of every single Japanese word in the entire book.
It absolutely blows my mind that at no point during the production or editing of the audio book did anyone stop and ask themselves if they should maybe spend an hour learning how to say these words.
To make it even worse, since this is basically Japanese cultural fanfic, non of the words are difficult or uncommon. It's all stuff that anyone who has watched a couple anime would know not only the meaning of the word, but how it should sound. It's like reading a novel set in Costa Rica where the author has insisted on using gracias and amigos at every opportunity even though novel is in english and the characters are speaking english, and meanwhile the narrator insists on pronouncing it grassy-ass.
You spend the whole book wanting to claw your own ears out, correcting the pronunciation of every third word under your breath, all while feeling like your are reading the amateur writing project of a 15 year old weeb.
The cultural writing is also pretty on the nose, with comically strict gender roles and caricatured main characters.
However, as I learned to sail in the blood of a thousand butchered words, filling my sails with exasperated sighs at every clumsy cultural reference, I did eventually manage to enjoy the story. There was some really interesting stuff in here plot wise. Her 30 something year old mom with the secret swordsman past actually had some pretty good fights that mixed the pain of disused joints with the knowledge of a younger fighter. The author is pretty big into martial arts irl, and I think it showed beneficially in the story with the training and battle scenes having an exciting energy and decent realism. The author's dad is from the province where the Nanjing massacre occurred, and it is clear that the author based many parts of the invasion on those accounts. The invasion has a raw realism that I have found to be lacking in most fantasy battles. I also love the cavalier attitude she has towards keeping characters alive.
Side note, it drives me absolutely insane how she just leaves her sword laying around everywhere.
Ok, I thought I was done with the whole pronunciation rant, but I've made it to the 75% and am now having to suffer through him confusing the hell out of me by literally saying older brother when he is supposed to be saying older sister. He keeps saying knee-san (older brother) instead of neigh-san (older sister). Seriously, you cannot imagine how hard it is to be swept away in a tender and emotional moment of tragedy and loss when the narrator keeps calling the female main character "older brother".
After finishing, I read an excellent review on the fantasy subreddit calling this the clumsiest masterpiece he'd ever read. That reviewer hit the nail on the head. The writing is so unedited and clumsy at times, but also so raw and real. I'd love to see what this author could do with more editing and polish. Solid 3.5 from me.
To make it worse, my version was narrated by some white dude who had clearly never heard a word of Japanese in his life. Japanese is not like French or German, with a bunch of unique sounds that do not exist in English. With only a couple exceptions, any sound you can make in Japanese can be easily produced by an English speaker. With maybe an hour of coaching, any American narrator would have no problem pronouncing the Japanese words. And yet somehow, it's like this narrator managed to intentionally butcher every word. I'm not sure there was a single Japanese word in the entire book where he choose the correct vowel sound.
Kun is not pronounced kuh-n, it's coo-n. It's not fun-yaki. It's foon-yaki. Ni is not nigh, it's knee. Tousama isn't two-sam-ah, it's toe-sah-mah. It just goes on and on and on for hundreds of pages. Like I get it, you're a random white narrator, you aren't going to sound fluent and have perfect pitch accent, but holy shit it was like he intensionally chose to use the wrong version of every single Japanese word in the entire book.
It absolutely blows my mind that at no point during the production or editing of the audio book did anyone stop and ask themselves if they should maybe spend an hour learning how to say these words.
To make it even worse, since this is basically Japanese cultural fanfic, non of the words are difficult or uncommon. It's all stuff that anyone who has watched a couple anime would know not only the meaning of the word, but how it should sound. It's like reading a novel set in Costa Rica where the author has insisted on using gracias and amigos at every opportunity even though novel is in english and the characters are speaking english, and meanwhile the narrator insists on pronouncing it grassy-ass.
You spend the whole book wanting to claw your own ears out, correcting the pronunciation of every third word under your breath, all while feeling like your are reading the amateur writing project of a 15 year old weeb.
The cultural writing is also pretty on the nose, with comically strict gender roles and caricatured main characters.
However, as I learned to sail in the blood of a thousand butchered words, filling my sails with exasperated sighs at every clumsy cultural reference, I did eventually manage to enjoy the story. There was some really interesting stuff in here plot wise. Her 30 something year old mom with the secret swordsman past actually had some pretty good fights that mixed the pain of disused joints with the knowledge of a younger fighter. The author is pretty big into martial arts irl, and I think it showed beneficially in the story with the training and battle scenes having an exciting energy and decent realism. The author's dad is from the province where the Nanjing massacre occurred, and it is clear that the author based many parts of the invasion on those accounts. The invasion has a raw realism that I have found to be lacking in most fantasy battles. I also love the cavalier attitude she has towards keeping characters alive.
Side note, it drives me absolutely insane how she just leaves her sword laying around everywhere.
Ok, I thought I was done with the whole pronunciation rant, but I've made it to the 75% and am now having to suffer through him confusing the hell out of me by literally saying older brother when he is supposed to be saying older sister. He keeps saying knee-san (older brother) instead of neigh-san (older sister). Seriously, you cannot imagine how hard it is to be swept away in a tender and emotional moment of tragedy and loss when the narrator keeps calling the female main character "older brother".
After finishing, I read an excellent review on the fantasy subreddit calling this the clumsiest masterpiece he'd ever read. That reviewer hit the nail on the head. The writing is so unedited and clumsy at times, but also so raw and real. I'd love to see what this author could do with more editing and polish. Solid 3.5 from me.