Grass for His Pillow
by Lian Hearn
Riverhead Books, 2003, ISBN 0-57322-251-8
A book review by Elisabeth Carey
Book Two of Tales of the Otori. Takeo and Kaede, their friends and allies, and their more interesting and important enemies and rivals have lots more trouble and suffer through far more interesting times than they can feel that they deserve. Told in alternating sections from Takeo's viewpoint and from Kaede's, they are seemingly irrevocably separated from each other. Kaede returns home to her father's house, to find that her mother is dead and her father has been a terrible manager and that she must wrest the management of the estate from him or she and her younger sisters will starve. Takeo is snatched away from the uncle he has come to love and respect, carried off by the Tribe which he has come to regard as being as morally reprehensible as his father ever did. Survival is a serious challenge for each of them; being reunited is barely even a hope.
Still very good; I'm waiting for the third volume.
NESFA homepage | Review Index | More reviews by Elisabeth Carey