This book is the best I've read this year for sure. It is a story about real-life happenings and based on actual historical figures. It is set in 17 century Japan, and is told in the first-person by Yasuke, the first foreign-born Samurai and the only Samurai who was of African descent. Yasuke, who we first come to know as Isaac, was taken from his home village by slave traders at the age of thirteen. Even at that age he was very big for his age. His village was sacked and burned and only those few that the traders knew would fetch a good prize at auction were saved. As the story progresses with Yasuke's life in Japan, we learn of his early days in bondage where he was tortured, beaten and starved, and forced to fight in Portuguese mercenary wars. He was sold again to Jesuits and became the bodyguard of a priest whose mission was to bring Catholicism to Japan. Yasuke learns a lot from this Jesuit priest. He can speak many languages, and learns his numbers and letters (albeit in Latin). But when, for reasons of his own, his priest decides to give Yasuke to the warlord Oda Nobunaga for the promise of a church to be built in Kyoto. Yasuke strikes up a close friendship with Nobunaga, and is granted his freedom and the post of Samurai in Nobunaga's unified Japan. There Yasuke learns the meaning of loyalty and friendship and vows to serve his lord until the end. "Who does not know the order that our flesh should serve to repay kindness, and life should serve for bonds and moral obligations?"--from The Noh play Tomoe. Yasuke fights almost to the death to preserve the memory and legacy of his Lord, and he does this because of the lessons that he has learned in his court and the friendship that they had. "Until the lion has its own storyteller, the hunter will have the better story"--African proverb. This book is told from the viewpoint of the "lion", and Yasuke, through Craig Shreve, is his storyteller. This book enthralled me from beginning to end, and Craig Shreve's writing is absolutely exquisite. Because the story is told in the first-person, it made the tale more realistic and it actually felt like I was there. Many lessons can be learned from Yasuke's journey. Highly recommend. ( )

Not completely unreadable but difficult to follow with flat characters and no real sense of place. I'm wishing I'd read the nonfiction book instead. ( )

The history is fascinating, the themes interesting, and some of the dialogue is very good, but there's a lack of immediacy to things; despite all the action, there's precious little intrigue. Our protagonist has lived a life in which he has been kidnapped, sold and given away, but still feels like he's observing a lot of that fascinating history for much of the book's length. I'd love a revisionist James Clavell, but sadly I'm not sure this is it. ( )