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4.5/5. An extremely unsatisfying ending still can't take away what is otherwise an incredible book and history lesson.

Back in the 1970s (1973-1979), my wife and her friends and colleagues would pass around paperback books they read. It was cost-effective. When my wife received a book she didn't want to read, I'd read it. I read Shogun. I don't recall anything about it except that it was long, but I swear I read the whole damn book.**Addendum: 6 February 2023Someone commented somewhere that when he read the paperback version of Shogun, it was a two book series. This comment made me curious, so I did some Googlin...

Back in 1980 there was a TV miniseries about this book starring Richard Chamberlain. I was a kid but recalled watching it and enjoying watching the samurai with their katanas and the alien culture described. Clavell’s book was first published in 1975 and this seemed to have sparked a resurgence of interest in Japanese culture, highlighted by John Belushi’s samurai character on Saturday Night Live.Anyway.James Clavell’s landmark masterpiece about English sailor John Blackthorne, called Anjin-san ...

Update January 2024: There's going to be a new TV show based on this book next month!I didn't like the 1980 adaptation, so my hopes for this one out in February are that it'll be much better, as the trailer insinuates. I like the choice of actress for Mariko, she looks so much closer to my mental image of the character. Very promising! Update March 2024: Having now watched 5 episodes, halfway through the FX adaptation, I can say the following:- The show is "fixing" the book's most egregious i...

.This is The OneMy favourite book of all time. The one that transported me far away and long ago. The one that made our world cease to exist. The one that I read every spare minute of every day, even in elevators; a half page now and then. And when I was within 300 pages of the end, I stayed up all night and the morning to finish.I became Anjin-san in the magical world of feudal Japan.Ten years later in 1985 I read it again. Magic, power, intrigue, JAPAN. I'm about due now, to read it again.A c...

To be honest - I couldn't finish this book. It's so atrocious, on so many levels, that I got exactly 75% of the way through and then gave up. The only reason I got so far was because this book was recommended to me by a friend, but nothing could possibly persuade me to continue reading this racist, sexist, extremely problematic monstrosity.Where to begin? This book is the standard white male fantasy. Glorious wonderful strong white male with a canonically-mentioned giant dick (so very crucial to...

As a picture of Japanese history it suffers from what another reviewer hilariously called (I paraphrase, here) our "round-eyed western mythologized POV."Which, okay—it was written in the 70's, after all.But as a story? OMFG what a fucking story.I fell into this book as a teenager and didn't come back out until I'd read 600,000 words and had a conversational grasp of transliterated Japanese.Three days. Three days of bliss.I dare you to read this and not—at the earliest opportunity—call someone a ...

Yes. I read 1,152 pages of a book I liked less and less as the pages went by. I could have given this 3 stars, maybe, but I was so unsatisfied with it all that I can't do it.It isn't even that it was unreadable - considering its size, it was a fast read, even though I had to use some special motivational tricks in the end when I just wanted to get it over with. The main problem was that there wasn't a single character I really liked, and god, I hate Blackthorne from the bottom of my very soul. I...

Japanese people tell me that it's all nonsense: samurai were not in fact ready to commit seppuku at the slightest provocation. They had a strong sense of honor, but were also interested in staying alive. Well, fancy that. Though I'm embarrassed to admit that I believed it when I read the book. I wish a Japanese author would return the compliment, and write a similarly bogus historical blockbuster about a Japanese hero visiting Europe during the late 16th century and helping Queen Elizabeth I sor...

So sorry, I am not worthy of the honor of reviewing this novel. If however, my Lord insists it, then I shall endeavor to offer up some humble thoughts regarding its mighty, even epic narrative. Neh? The scope is so vast, the characters and settings are so many, the head is liable to spin at times, so sorry. But the arc it follows is like a peregrine's path through the sky: long but fast and with vicious twists along what might otherwise have seemed a predictable path. I'm sure my Lord would agre...