In the Service of Samurai

I loved this story!!!!! The exotic locale is refreshing and the worldbuilding is great. The characters are noble and driven. It reminded me of old Japanese ghost stories and ghost flicks I've seen. Full of folklore that just pulls you into the character's world. It's just a great little book. -C

In a medieval Japanese village, a powerful samurai kidnaps a fifteen-year-old mapmaker. The hapless young boy, Chizuson Toshiro, is thereby thrust into a world honeycombed with riddles and undergirded with darkness. Virtually everyone Toshi meets for the next 300 pages of this novel is a ghost. In Service of the Samurai is a neatly spun fantasy in which a young boy comes of age in the midst of an extraordinary journey. As the masked geisha, Miro, slowly gets a grip on Toshi's heart, he finds himself beginning to care about his captors. Stockholm syndrome or not, they redeem themselves by giving Toshi a chance to choose his own path and make his own life. At its core, In Service of the Samurai is a classic mythic story about a hero's journey. It is a minutely imagined fantasy that transports readers to a highly nuanced world. The pacing is not for those who like a plot that whisks along. But for my money, this is a story worth the reading. Review by Cheryl Swanson, Author of Death Game and reviewer with Gotta Read

reviewed by Angela Wilds for fantasynovelreview.com Imagine being bought into slavery for a group of undead Samurai! This is exactly what befalls Toshi the young slave mapmaker. One night Asaka Ietsugu comes to the master's shop, drops some money and a note on the counter, and takes Toshi away. Toshi is shanghaied aboard a ghostly vessel to help the doomed Samurai complete the mission they failed to do during life. And so begins an adventure that has Toshi sailing the high seas; having tea with the beautiful undead geisha, Akiuji Miko; and battling ghosts, undead ninjas and demons to recover the object his new master must find to win eternal peace for the entire crew. Toshi learns that appearances aren't always what they seem, that sometimes you can't take things at face value. You need to take a closer look. For Toshi the adventure is also a journey into manhood. Gloria Oliver has written a delightful tale of a young boy's triumphs over adversity. She brings to life characters who have you first hating them and then she turns it around and plays on your sympathy for them. In the Service of Samurai is a terrific novel set in the land of the rising sun. If Japanese animation is your bag, you'll enjoy this novel!

This a wonderfully crafted tale of a young man forced into an extreme situation. While the magic of the adventure is fully brought out, the story never lifts to become fanciful. The full weight of the challenges and the seriousness of the constraints placed on the participants is kept ever alive keeping the reader from ever doubting the reality of the story. There is nothing new about a story of undead needing to fulfill a mission. What raises this story above the norm is the clarity of the characters. The strengths and weaknesses of those in the story are stated then held consistent. The youth through which the undead seek to restore their honor, named Toshi, is not a bumbling idiot, but presented from the first as having certain skills and some intelligence. The reader thus enters the story with a sense that the story will remain credible and not need to rely on some amazing twist of fate to meet its objective. Some might consider the pacing of the story to be slow. There is not a constant injection of action powering the novel. The author wisely allows the uniqueness of the setting to amaze the reader, and trusts in the wonder of the characters to hold one's attention. Truthfully, Toshi is not a character that would appear credible facing a number of opponents. While the main character does some amazing things, the settings are made clear with the methods of survival kept very credible. The author does a magnificent job of bringing out all important characters even as the literary focus stays on Toshi. Those undead and those living that have an influence on the story are fully presented. The adventure does not stay in one place, but each scene is brought completely to life. There should be no doubt that this novel earns all five stars. The genre is fantasy with an intention for the book to be for young adults. It however is not a childish tale and was fully enjoyed by the writer of this review.

Toshi the mapmaker receives an unusual visitor to his shop and is launched on a unique, unpredictable adventure to save the souls of a fallen samurai and his retinue. It mixes the elements of the classic ghost story with those of an epic quest and tosses it into the mysterious world of old Japan. The result is an entertaining read with tingling, spooky moments (the scene in the temple is worth the price of the book). Occasionally the pace seems slow, but the lead character is easy to relate to as he comes of age. Recommended.