Brilliance of the Moon by Lian Hearn
Jul. 29th, 2006 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
The young warrior Otori Takeo has been told by the blind prophetess, "Your lands will stretch from sea to sea. But peace comes at the price of bloodshed. Four battles to win and one to lose."
Takeo's passion for Kaede has made him powerful enemies, and he faces a war to secure her future and his own. He has legendary magical skills and is the deadliest assassin of the secret Tribe, but now he must lead an army into combat that will be savage and merciless. Can his small force of untrained men defeat the warriors of mighty warlords? Takeo rides into battle hoping there is truth in the last words of the prophecy: "You yourself are safe from death, except at the hands of your own son.".
I think I could have forgiven a lot of what was wrong with this book, were it not for the dildo scene. Lian Hearn officially lost my goodwill with the dildo scene.
To be honest, the plot really falls apart in this book. Hearn rushes the battles (and in any event, the prophecy robs them of any dramatic tension) and butchers her own characters in order to get to the climax. For example, Arai is transformed from a character who risked everything to protect Kaede in Across the Nightingale Floor to a two-dimensional despot who betrays the principles he fought for and forces Kaede into an arranged marriage with Fujiwara as a punishment for marrying Takeo without his permission. In turn, Fujiwara is transformed from a potentially interesting and multi-faceted character into a stereotypical evil gay husband who wants Kaede just to add to his collection and who gives her a dildo on their wedding night in order to humiliate her.
Unsurpsingly, Kaede remains the biggest problem character in this book and again, I wonder if Hearn had a clear idea of what to do with her. There is undoubtedly potential to have had Kaede try to gain some political control on her own behalf once Takeo leaves for his campaign - in terms of the book's internal logic, it would not have been impossible, given that Lady Maruyama had power in her own right and Kaede is the heir to her lands. Instead, Kaede gives up any idea of being taken seriously by the men when they seem to ignore her, and on a whim that comes out of nowhere, decides to return home to her father's lands (and hence to being captured by Lord Fujiwara). Her sisters, who in Grass For His Pillow she had tried to be strong for, are carted off to be hostages in Arai's court for no other reason than to give her no reason to fight. It's a stupid set up, made more irritating by the way in which Kaede just walks into it. I felt no sympathy for a character whose plight was entirely of her own making and I found it contrived that the men supposedly protecting her (including her family servant who ultimately betrays her), all choose to do nothing to help her.
Hearn also changes the narrative structure. In the previous two books, she alternated between Takeo's first person perspective, and the third person account of Kaede's misadventures. For this book, she introduces a new third person perspective to follow Shizuka as she returns to the Tribe at Kaede's insistence. This is done purely to try and tie off the Tribe loose ends and it sticks out as a result, particularly as the attempt to show how the Tribe is not even loyal to its own (forcing Yuki to commit suicide for no other reason than that she would not have raised Takeo's son to hate him) is cartoonish.
Hearn also attempts to introduce a sense of an historical time-frame to the story, which has been absent from the previous books. The effect is curiously to loose the fantasy element but also makes the Hidden's obvious relationship to Christianity (which has been present throughout the story) somewhat jarring.
The battles are perfunctory and even the final fight between Takeo and Kotaro made me feel nothing other than "Isn't it over, already?". Hearn cannot resist the temptation to fall into melodrama and the final fire at Fujiwara's house and the terrible effect on Kaede produced only laughter in this reader, given that even a soap opera writer would be ashamed of it.
The Verdict:
An irritating mess, I would not recommend this to anyone. The female characters in particular were irritating for their weakness and the perfuntory and rushed nature in which Hearn tries to resolve loose ends made for dull reading. A waste of an excellent idea and thoroughly disappointing.
The young warrior Otori Takeo has been told by the blind prophetess, "Your lands will stretch from sea to sea. But peace comes at the price of bloodshed. Four battles to win and one to lose."
Takeo's passion for Kaede has made him powerful enemies, and he faces a war to secure her future and his own. He has legendary magical skills and is the deadliest assassin of the secret Tribe, but now he must lead an army into combat that will be savage and merciless. Can his small force of untrained men defeat the warriors of mighty warlords? Takeo rides into battle hoping there is truth in the last words of the prophecy: "You yourself are safe from death, except at the hands of your own son.".
I think I could have forgiven a lot of what was wrong with this book, were it not for the dildo scene. Lian Hearn officially lost my goodwill with the dildo scene.
To be honest, the plot really falls apart in this book. Hearn rushes the battles (and in any event, the prophecy robs them of any dramatic tension) and butchers her own characters in order to get to the climax. For example, Arai is transformed from a character who risked everything to protect Kaede in Across the Nightingale Floor to a two-dimensional despot who betrays the principles he fought for and forces Kaede into an arranged marriage with Fujiwara as a punishment for marrying Takeo without his permission. In turn, Fujiwara is transformed from a potentially interesting and multi-faceted character into a stereotypical evil gay husband who wants Kaede just to add to his collection and who gives her a dildo on their wedding night in order to humiliate her.
Unsurpsingly, Kaede remains the biggest problem character in this book and again, I wonder if Hearn had a clear idea of what to do with her. There is undoubtedly potential to have had Kaede try to gain some political control on her own behalf once Takeo leaves for his campaign - in terms of the book's internal logic, it would not have been impossible, given that Lady Maruyama had power in her own right and Kaede is the heir to her lands. Instead, Kaede gives up any idea of being taken seriously by the men when they seem to ignore her, and on a whim that comes out of nowhere, decides to return home to her father's lands (and hence to being captured by Lord Fujiwara). Her sisters, who in Grass For His Pillow she had tried to be strong for, are carted off to be hostages in Arai's court for no other reason than to give her no reason to fight. It's a stupid set up, made more irritating by the way in which Kaede just walks into it. I felt no sympathy for a character whose plight was entirely of her own making and I found it contrived that the men supposedly protecting her (including her family servant who ultimately betrays her), all choose to do nothing to help her.
Hearn also changes the narrative structure. In the previous two books, she alternated between Takeo's first person perspective, and the third person account of Kaede's misadventures. For this book, she introduces a new third person perspective to follow Shizuka as she returns to the Tribe at Kaede's insistence. This is done purely to try and tie off the Tribe loose ends and it sticks out as a result, particularly as the attempt to show how the Tribe is not even loyal to its own (forcing Yuki to commit suicide for no other reason than that she would not have raised Takeo's son to hate him) is cartoonish.
Hearn also attempts to introduce a sense of an historical time-frame to the story, which has been absent from the previous books. The effect is curiously to loose the fantasy element but also makes the Hidden's obvious relationship to Christianity (which has been present throughout the story) somewhat jarring.
The battles are perfunctory and even the final fight between Takeo and Kotaro made me feel nothing other than "Isn't it over, already?". Hearn cannot resist the temptation to fall into melodrama and the final fire at Fujiwara's house and the terrible effect on Kaede produced only laughter in this reader, given that even a soap opera writer would be ashamed of it.
The Verdict:
An irritating mess, I would not recommend this to anyone. The female characters in particular were irritating for their weakness and the perfuntory and rushed nature in which Hearn tries to resolve loose ends made for dull reading. A waste of an excellent idea and thoroughly disappointing.
