David has taken the tales of Miyamoto Musashi and created his own story from these, so some of this is loosely based in what is told of the real man and some of this is based entirely from David’s imagination.
All told, it works really well, but there just seems a step too far here and there, which, for me at least, was distracting a little. While it has been compared to Shogun by some, for me, it just doesn’t have that same level of believability to it.
But then, if i want the real tales of Musashi then i could, of course, go and read them.
It certainly keeps you reading. It’s pretty much non stop without the annoying pregnant pauses of most stories, and David really does portray the period very well.
All in all, i got this book and the next in the series for 99p each on Kindle — which is an absolute bargain for this kind of story telling — and i’ll be diving back into Musashi’s world in the second book of this series, Sword of Honour, later today: i’m looking forward to it very much.
