Across the Nightingale Floor - Review
Fourteen years since its initial publication, Across the Nightingale Floor is a calm, measured book. It's the kind of fantasy unconcerned with frenetic plotting and frequent action, preferring to channel its energy into developing compelling characters, multifaceted politics and a sprawling world inspired by the real feudal Japan. Though it's been a beloved Australian classic for the better part of two decades, I'm only now experiencing Lian Hearn's Tales of the Otori for the first time. This is thanks in part to the recent re-release of Hearn's series in gorgeous new covers, but also because the prequel series, The Tale of Shikanoko , set three hundred years before Otori , begins in March 2016. So before seeing where everything begins in the fictional world, it's good to go back to the beginning in the real one. The Three Countries are ruled by the Clans. After escaping the destruction of his village and the murder of his family, the young boy Tomasu is res...