I finished Shogun last night and I am so happy with myself.
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| The cover fell off my ancient copy, I'm not easy on my books. |
There have been many long books in my reading history. Most of them I really enjoyed. This one was only slightly enjoyable for me and because of that, finishing it was very sweet.
I'm not wondering what happens next or longing for more (after 1,152 pages few questions were left unanswered). At times I wanted to abandon this book and move on but I didn't, I kept reading. And, now I'm done with this book. Hallelujah!
I've talked to a few people who really enjoyed Shogun. It has many elements that should be appealing to me (historical fiction, fish out of water story, etc) but for some reason I never really connected with it. There were moments that I didn't want to put it down because I wanted to see what happened next, however, there are many other books I would recommend before this one.
While reading I kept searching for things to share. Surprisingly much of the text is either plot driven or detailed descriptions that wouldn't be particularly interesting out of context. Finally, in the last chapter I found something to share:
"He squinted into the sky once more and watched the falcon, no longer his falcon. She was a creature of immense beauty up there, free, beyond all the tears, soaring effortlessly. Then some force beyond his ken took her and whirled her northward and she vanished."
It is well written but there just weren't enough characters that I really loved. In some ways, it was very stressful which could be the author successfully giving the reader a taste of what Blackthorne (the Englishman stranded in Japan) was feeling.
I got used to the names that were tripping me up so much at the beginning. I liked learning about historical Japanese culture and I respect Clavell for the amount of research he did to bring this era alive. And, it is kind of awesome to sit in the children's section of the library while your son is playing and read this massive tome, while everyone else looks at you like you must be a genius. Or maybe they were just annoyed with my pretentiousness? Either way, I'm done with Shogun and moving on to greener pastures!
