This refers to the original Tales of the Otori trilogy, by Lian Hearn:
* Across the Nightingale Floor (2002)
* Grass for His Pillow (2003)
* Brilliance of the Moon (2004).

It's an excellent story, epic but also beautiful, tragic and lyric, well suited to the Japanese-inspired setting. For me, it was one of those series that demanded compulsive reading. I cared about the characters and what their fate would be. My complaint about the trilogy is that the ending had a deux ex machina component, but when the journey has been so enjoyable I'm willing to forgive the rushed ending.

Now I'm looking forward to reading The Harsh Cry of the Heron, which continues the story some years later. The last book in the series, Heaven's Net is Wide, is actually a prequel that tells Otori Shigeru's story. I will read it too, but thinking about it I feel a bit like the prequel Star Wars trilogy. Knowing what's going to happen takes part of the enjoyment out of it. ( )

Read this a few years ago so don't recall much detail but know I absolutely loved the different to usual setting for fantasy, based on an alternative mediaeval Japan. The plight of Kaede is particularly interesting and sympathetically depicted. I have always meant to read the rest of this trilogy, but have had a lot of other books to catch up on first. However, unlike most of those, the present novel is a 'keeper', that I have held onto, to re-read in the future.
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Update: having obtained other volumes in the series I decided to re-read the first and it is as good as I remember. The choice of a first person narrative for the young male protagonist and third for the female is an interesting choice but the characters are all well delineated despite there being a lot of them, so you don't get confused who is who. The main ones are very sympathetically developed, with the pairs of star-crossed lovers, and the Japanese attitudes towards honourable suicide well conveyed. Despite the social attitudes towards women and in some cases persecution, the main female characters are all strong and find ways to resist. The special powers that Tomasu/Takeo develops are also interesting and the tensions between the various clans and the Tribe of assassins with the undercurrent of doom hanging over some likeable characters.

Given that I have been disappointed by some re-reads over the past few years, but not by this one, I have upgraded the original 4 stars to a 5 star rating and I hope to enjoy the subsequent volumes as much. ( )

Book One in the Tales of the Otori trilogy.

After picking up a tiny little book that had just the first half of the story in it and reading that, I decided to finish it on audio. I enjoyed it, but don't really feel like I need to read the other books. Which is actually not a bad thing because it means the first book concluded successfully and didn't leave me hanging. In the end, this is YA stuff and I'm in my 50's so I need a little more adultness to be interested in reading an entire series.

One thing I didn't like was that the hero of the story was visiting whorehouses where it sounded like there were "underaged" girls and he himself was in his mid-teens. So first off, gross, and second, it just doesn't seem very "heroic" to have your young hero paying for sex. There wasn't any description of what happened, just a sentence about him visiting often. I'm like, "Would Captain America go to a brothel?" "Would Aragorn go to a brothel?" "Would Harry Potter go to a brothel?" I mean Geralt of Rivia or someone like Wolverine sure, but those "anti-heroes" and they're kind of assholes. ( )

Entertaining with a similar feel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ( )