Coleshōgun blog post 5.

I would not say I enjoyed reading this book. But, I would recommend it to anyone interested. I would say that the main reason for not liking it was that I had to pick it apart, and THINK about what I was reading instead of powering through the bad parts, silly, or racist parts, and I could focus on the parts that, while not integral to the plot, were good writing. The main problem I had with the book was Blackthorn. He was just too much. Any real person in his position would have died on almost every other page.  Any real person in his position would not have run into so many sympathetic, European language speaking people. From the priest was there when he washed up, to the priest who he happened to be jailed with, to the beautiful woman who came to live in his house and so on. It's just unrealistic. Also, the characters take instantaneous likings to Blackthorn, and I could go on. Forgetting Blackthorn somehow for a moment, the book was good, the book was bad, overall I would have enjoyed it if I didn't have to.

Coleshōgun blog post 4.

Throughout the book, I was surprised. I was surprised by the characters, the writing, the customs, the...everything. None of that's good or bad, it just is how it is. Fr'instance, Blackthorne was so amazing and smart and powerful at the beginning, I thought he was going to use his not-a-different-race-from-the-target-demographic powers and overpower all of the 'japaners' or something like that. Instead, he becomes less and less important, fading into the background to the point of being given a house and ignored. That isn't to say he becomes any less of a Mary Sue, because he is a samurai now, despite not being born into the class, which goes against everything the book has been repeating on the subject. It's just to say that he is no longer integral to the war in an immediate sense, it will just completely hinge upon him later on. the more I write, the less of  a point I have. Regardless, I'm not surprised. Anymore. I guess I'm more surprised that in a book that calls itself The Great Novel Of Japan which was the New York Times best seller there is this character who goes through the pages kicking ass and taking names, although again, maybe less surprised when it comes down to it. I was definitely surprised by how different our culture is from the Japanese, though. According to the book, they kill people for fun, screw anything that moves (or doesn't), urinate wherever, are basically weaker than any European, are extremely uncultured, have no technology, and are basically terrible. And they call US savages? (in the book.) I was also surprised by how evenhanded and unbiased it was.

The Start of a War- Coleshōgun blog post 3.

In this passage, the forces of Ishido, Toranaga, Yabu, and even Omi's village are mobilizing for war. Toranaga has sided with the church and dissolved Japan's federal government, making Ishido powerless. As well, he has started to broker a deal with Blackthorn about the possibility of receiving a fleet of ships from the English. Becoming one of the only powers in Japan with a powerful fleet would put him in complete control of the country. I am starting to really like the book now that the action heating up. Also, now that there is a character better than Blackthorn in almost every way that a non European can be, Toranaga has become my favorite character of the story. This passage of the story has gotten me interested in the story again, because the characters are actually doing stuff instead of laying around and... laying around. The included video shows scenes from the movie version of Shōgun, which helps to understand key aspects of the novel by adding a visual aspect to the mentioned characters, making it easier to understand who is who.



http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/?period=09&region=eaj
This website is a timeline of Japan in the 1600s. Understanding this time period is important to the novel, because it is the time period in which the book takes place.

Intro to Blackthorn- Coleshōgun blog post 2.

Mary Sue- A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue),is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader. Perhaps the single underlying feature of all characters described as "Mary Sues" is that they are too ostentatious for the audience's taste, or that the author seems to favor the character too highly. The author may seem to push how exceptional and wonderful the "Mary Sue" character is on his or her audience, sometimes leading the audience to dislike or even resent the character fairly quickly; such a character could be described as an "author's pet."

Meet Blackthorn. He pilots a ship that was recently crashed onto the shores of Japan, along with ten of his crew. When he arrived, he was treated well enough by the villagers (especially the villagers who are ladies). after a while, though, the man in charge of the province, named Yabu learned of Blackthorn’s arrival and decided that they decided he was foreign and smelly. Mostly because of his refusal to bathe, but also because he wasn’t Japanese. Yabu decided to break Blackthorn's spirit by throwing him and his men in a pit. For this, as well as a few scenes I would rather not mention, because they are gross, Blackthorn swore revenge on him. He was removed from the pit, spirit intact of course, then taken from Yabu’s care by an even higher up, lord Toranaga. Toranaga used him as a means to gather information on the world outside Japan. I was surprised and delighted when Blackthorn did time in prison, thinking it would develop his character and show him facing hardships, as Toranaga attempted to break his will on death row. Very quickly, however, Blackthorn proves his might outfighting some dude who tries to shank him, and then finds out that everyone in the prison was converted to Christianity by a Spanish monk inmate, so they all begin to worship him like the devilishly handsome English man-god he is. Also, he gets let out of prison after he absorbs a sufficiently plot developing Japanese vocabulary. The Japanese, however, are on the brink of war between Lord Toranaga and another man, lord Ishido. Due to skillful political maneuvering by Yabu, the war to be may depend on who he sides with, though I think it won't matter because Blackthorn will fly into space, and spend some time with the hydralisks learning to spit acid before returning to Earth and melting off Yabu's face. Maybe not that, but Blackthorn's going to kill Yabu in some inane way. I say inane because Yabu is a strong and disiplined man who is also a samuri with a samuri sword, and Blackthorn is basically this half starved prisoner who gets tossed around from oppressor to oppressor whenever he blinks. in fact, after getting out of jail, he is being taken to lord Ishido when Ishido's men get killed by bandits who get killed by Yabu's men who take him back to Toranaga. So, my prediction for the story is Yabu will get minus one face.