To read Shogun is to be immersed in the savagely beautiful, tragically noble world of feudal Japan. ( )

This book was kind of hard to get in to but it was interesting enough that I really wanted to know how it ended. I was in a good portion till I was really sucked in. I loved the plotting and the mind games going on. It was really exciting to see it all play out in the end. I loved the details about the culture I really felt like I was getting a fascinating history lesson as well. I only am annoyed that I cant really know what was more Fact and what was more Fiction in the details about the culture.

A slow start, and some of the characters seem less authentic than the setting; but ultimately worth the time taken to read it.

I was a bit disoriented by the start of the book, as I was not expecting so much of it to be set in the utterly different surroundings of a European sailing ship. I also had trouble remembering who was who, in a maze of feudal relationships in which everyone seemed to be plotting the overthrow of everyone else. But by the time I was about halfway through the book it had grabbed me. The author does a good job of making you want things to come out right for the nice guys (or, in the case of blood-hungry and power-crazy warriors, the slightly less nasty guys). The technique of using a European central character works well for introducing the reader to historical Japanese culture, though Blackthorne's reactions did often seem to me to be those of a 20th-century rather than a 16th-century Westerner (especially where cruelty and respect for the lives of peasants were concerned), and initially the characters spend rather too much time telling one another things, so that the author can spoon a lot of background facts into the reader without using footnotes or an explanatory introduction. The ending felt slightly odd, as the personal tales of the characters were tied up more or less neatly, but the resolution of the political-military context was left to a summary postscript. In retrospect, the title also seemed odd, since until the postscript, the shogunate is only mentioned for Toranaga to deny that he seeks it. Overall, though, the book is a good yarn with some fascinating insights into an unfamiliar culture.

MB 29-v-2009 ( )

While very long, "Shogun" is well worth experiencing. Clavell has a gift for making a long- ago and foreign culture seem very rich and immediate. The story is both exciting and emotional. This is one of my favorite books. ( )

Lori , my girlfriend at the time , now my wife , reccomended this book to me and I fell in love with the asian saga ( )