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.