Lord Yamada no Goji is an impoverished Lord in Heinan
period Japan. He has very little property to his name, and a bad sake habit to
go with it. But he also has an agile mind and a great knowledge of the ghosts,
demons and other creatures that plague Japan.
Through this series of short stories we follow Lord
Yamada as he faces a variety of the beasties that plague local daimyo who have
heard of his excellent services – as well as the schemes he gets gently entangled
with due to his contact with Princess Teiko. Demons, ghosts and always the
tricky youkai cause problems across Japan and many times the answer is not
always as simple or as obvious as just an exorcism or a monster to kill. Lord
Yamada is called when things are delicate, when things are complicated and when
discretion is needed.
Often assisted by the thoroughly disreputable priest, Kenji, Yamada has the perfect mind to untwist this myriad mysteries.
The world setting is Ancient Japan during the Heian
period and Lord Yamada no Goji is an impoverished lord of that era, though with
skills that make him in demand. I think this book is highly authentic to its
setting – though it’s difficult for me to say since I’m not even close to an
expert in Heian Period Japan. I’ve done some googling and some reading and that’s
not even close to enough. But within those limits of my knowledge, I found no
contradictions and a lot of richness. This book feels extremely well researched
–just the fact it’s taking a period of Japan’s history away from the extremely
popular Shogunate period is an
indication of that in itself. Imagine, a whole book set in Ancient Japan
without a single katana! That alone makes me think it’s authentic because
authors, especially western authors, generally salivate at the opportunity to
stick katanas everywhere.
And the sheer amount of elegant description that goes into this book gives a strong sense of authenticity. There is so much detail here, so many different factors being referred to, to many political events being eluded to and just generally such a rich tapestry of the time, era, religions, mythology and people. There is a lot of research in this book – a lot of work has gone to make it very true to the era and setting. It hasn’t just relied in Wikipedia or google and it shows in the writing. It’s one of those historical novels that has a true feel of time and place about it.
Related to that, the writing is excellent. All this
information is conveyed, all this beautiful detail about the time and place,
but never is there an info dump, never is it clumsy, never is it convoluted and
never does it drag. It’s always fascinating, always well paced and doesn’t lose
my interest for a second. This is one of those books I can gleefully read cover
to cover without pause. And that’s from someone who doesn’t usually like short
stories. But these flowed naturally into each other, they told and overarching
plot and each just built on each other extremely well despite containing neat, separate
story arcs. And each story was neat – it wasn’t a concept drawn out to turn it
into a short story nor was it a rushed full length novel condensed down. There were
no loose threads, no elements that strongly needed developing. Nothing left
handing or brushed over. They were neat short stories ideally suited to the
short story format.
