Lian Hearn's fantasy novels play out in a trippy, magical version of medieval Japan, which if nothing else makes a change from the versions of medieval Europe that constitute the rest of the genre. It must be said that it never entirely gets away from feeling like a Westerner's idea of Japanese folklore, and one reads this wondering constantly how a Japanese author might have done things differently. But that said, Hearn is much more than just a literary weeaboo, and her long study of the country and its language gives her fantasy a core of authenticity that I probably shouldn't be sniffy about (at least, that's how it seems to someone like me who knows very little about Japanese history).

I was particularly interested in the ‘native’ language occasionally referenced in the book, which looks like Japanese but doesn't seem to be; we are sometimes told the meaning of placenames or personal names, and I couldn't work out if these were actually valid Japanese interpretations or not. Most of them seemed wrong, but occasionally they make sense (the hero Shikanoko's name is said to mean ‘deer's child’, which looks plausible). If they are wrong, though, the elements are such that these words would probably mean something in Japanese which raises a whole load of other problems. But I only studied a year of Japanese many years ago, and I'd love to read a review of this by a Japanese speaker who could shed some light on the matter.

The story itself hits many of the usual genre tropes – disinherited heroes, wise old magic-users, mythical creatures, warring factions – and is told quite smartly and engagingly for the most part, though the author sometimes struggles when trying to get across a lot of information about characters' backstories. This particular edition collects the first two parts of a complete tetralogy, and part one is really mostly set-up. I rather enjoyed it at the time, though I don't feel in a mad rush to go out and buy the remaining two books. ( )