![]() ![]() Shigeru spirits the traumatized boy back to Otori lands and adopts him after noting a strong resemblance between Takeo and his own late brother. When Iida shows up to destroy the village, 16-year-old Takeo is wandering in the hills, though even then he would have been killed by Iida’s soldiers if it hadn’t been for the fortunate appearance of Shigeru, a lord of the Dairyo’s rival clan, the Otori, who was doing some wandering of his own and demonstrated his handy way with a sword. ![]() ![]() The village in question is in Dairyo country, ruled by Iida Sadamu, a devil in warrior’s garb, and many of the villagers belong to a secretive, Christian-like cult called The Hidden, which has aroused Iida’s wrath with its subversive talk of kindness. In a preface, he admits using “echoes of Japanese customs and traditions” as he sets his action in a resolutely imaginary country where warring clans battle for supremacy. ![]() The village is doomed, but British-born newcomer Hearn still makes you care about it and its inhabitants. Mythical medieval Japan never seemed so attractive as in this breezy epic, the first in a trilogy, about a boy with strange powers who gets caught up in a long-simmering inter-clan conflict. ![]()
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