It is a lush story with significant research into the Sengoku period in Japan and a plot that I found propulsive. This is not to say that Across the Nightingale Floor isn’t well-crafted.

Hearn hints at a more complex story and throws in a few twists along the way, but ultimately chooses not to elaborate. Around the teenagers at the heart of the story the motivations and plots are more complex in that this is a world of competing political motivations, but the sweeps are no less dramatic and the agendas nuanced only marginally by the weight of personal histories. It is filled with strong motivations, dramatic gestures, and two simple arcs that are gradually brought closer together with just enough action to propel the story. Now that she has reached marriageable age, her captors have decided that it is time she marry and propose to use her as a pawn to undermine the last opposition to Tohan rule: brimming discontent centered on Otori Shigeru.Īcross the Nightingale Floor does not have a complicated plot. In short, through Kaede lays a potential path to power, and since the rise of Tohan when she was a child, Kaede has been a hostage at Noguchi castle. The second half of the romance comes from Kaede, the heir Shirakawa family and close relative of another powerful family headed by Lady Murayama. Recognizing in Takeo something of the Tribe, a sect of assassins, Shigeru adopts him, raises him, and makes plans to use him to seek revenge. Tohan recently came to prominence after defeating the Otori and killing Shigeru’s father and brother.

This fortunate encounter catapults Takeo into a world of clan politics. Takeo escapes with the aid of a stranger who turns out to be Lord Otori Shigeru. Takeo, as he comes to be known, was raised among the Hidden, a secretive sect of pacifists, until his village of Mino is attacked by men of Tohan.

I was not disappointed.Īcross the Nightingale Floor is a straightforward fantasy in the tradition modeled after Medieval Romances of brave warriors and doomed love, set in an alternate medieval Japan. Rather than get that book, I redirected to read this one because it was the first in the series, totally oblivious to who Lian Hearn was or really knowing anything about the series. Browsing through my local bookstore, I picked up another book in the same series and opened it because Ursula K. I found Across the Nightingale Floor by accident.

Across the nightingale floor review