by Fumi Yoshinaga, 235 pagesDogged Yoshimune's investigation into her shogun predecessors reveals a close-kept, bloody history of greed, lies, obsession, and love as Ôoku's second volume backs up eighty years to uncover the truth of the last male shogun's death and the life-altering, nation-shaping decisions that follow.
A moving, painful read, this. Conscription, murder, rape. Beauty is like a weed, here, stubbornly refusing to be cut down or poisoned or trampled out of existence, despite the ugliness suffocating it. In the face of so much trauma, it's a miracle anything good can survive. And yet it does. I look forward to future volumes tracing the history between these lives, this time of upheaval and transition, and Yoshimune's own--and to see what she does with that knowledge.
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